Health Watch: No goop dentist

Dentists take thousands of impressions of teeth every year. Many use what's known as, the goop. But now it's out with the old and in with a new way to get a good impression of the teeth.

Terry Brown has loved to fish all of his life ... but what he hates is going to the dentist.

"Just choking, you know, making you feel like you're choking," said Brown.

He can't stand the goop. It's like adult Play-Doh dentists have used for years to make impressions of teeth. Well, the goop is gone at one Florida dentist's office.

Melissa Collard at Dental Arts of Palm Harbor told Ivanhoe, "We do not have to take impressions anymore with all that goop."

"The scanner just makes things so much better for our patients as far as accuracy, as far as being able to visualize things," explained Larry Lieberman, DDS at Dental Arts of Palm Harbor.

Dr. Larry Lieberman is talking about the ITero scanner. In a matter of seconds, a patient's mouth appears.

"Put the camera on and go through the mouth, and we will get pictures of the teeth and we'll stitch all the teeth together into an arch into a mouth so that we can get a good bite registration. We can get a good rendering of the preparations of the teeth," explained Dr. Lieberman.

This is a big improvement over the goop's accuracy, which tends to expand or shrink at the lab.

Dr. Lieberman said, "Sometimes, you have more adjustments than we'd like."

Brown's teeth were scanned when he was being fitted for Invisalign. The picture on the left is before the scan. The picture on the right used the scanned impression to create a picture of what Brown's teeth will look like after he's done with the Invisalign.

"We're really at a boom with the kind of things we can do in dentistry. Whether it be scanners, whether it be implants, whether it be lasers," detailed Dr. Lieberman.

Brown, the avid fisherman loves this new technology hook, line ... and scanner.

The cost is the same for the patients with this scanner. There may be sometimes dentists need to use regular impression materials but Dr. Lieberman said he's getting to the point where they don't need regular impressions.

Contributors to this news report include: Emily Maza Gleason, Field Producer, Roque Correa, Editor and Christopher Tilley, photographer.