Robotic dentistry – will it replace dentists?

Abstract

In the last month I was fascinated to learn that the world's first full placement of a dental implant into a live human patient was performed by a robot, apparently, it was claimed, without any human assistance. It took the robot less than 1 hour to place two implants. This procedure was performed in China and now claims are being made that robots are on the way to replace human dentists! While robot-assisted implant placement has been carried before and indeed at least one programme carries a US clearance for clinical use, the Chinese report is the first of robotic surgical implant placement unaided by human hands. Is this the beginning of the end of dentists as claimed by the developers of this technology? I think not. While this all sounds very exciting, some careful thought about robots and dentistry still leaves me wondering how this is going to work. First of all, in some respects this is a retrograde step as it reduces dentistry to a purely mechanical trade with no consideration of the ‘patient’. For example, in my last editorial I elaborated on the important development of personalized dentistry – how robots will address this is very unclear. Indeed, robotic dentistry could be considered a retrograde step if we consider that traditional dental treatment has focused on preserving the structure, function and aesthetics of the dentition through mechanistic approaches. However, contemporary dentistry dictates that we focus more on preventing untoward effects on a patient's overall health, thus expanding our traditional scope of practise. How robots will achieve this and replace dentists is unclear. Another interesting aspect of this development is the claim that the procedure was carried out without any human intervention. The inference of this is that it all happened by magic but in reality someone had to assess the patient, someone had to input the data and someone (presumably) had to administrate the anaesthesia. There is no mention of robotic suturing although it seems this process was performed as a flapless procedure. The point about data input is very important. At present, in implant dentistry we see two aspects – those that are done very well through very careful planning and execution, and those done very badly by the uninformed and inexperienced with resultant bad (often catastrophic) outcomes. Thus, the same may well hold true for robotic implant placement. The outcome will only be as good as the person putting the information into the system. Remember GIGO – garbage in garbage out!