Better diagnosis of fissures and cracks

Presbyopia starts to affect natural vision by the age of 40¹ and hence the naked eye, begins to lose considerable visual acuity. However, these visual deficiencies can be easily compensated thanks to optical devices², though surprisingly few dentists are aware of their own visual limitations.³ 

One of the main steps in crack and fissure confirmation is visual examination, meaning each tooth should be thoroughly checked before placing a restoration to confirm or discard the presence of cracks. 

Visual diagnosis has its limitations because of the resolution of the human eye. The resolving power of the unaided human eye is only 200 microns⁴ – which means it needs at least 200 microns between two points to recognize them as separate from each other. Everything with a diameter or width under 200 microns will be extremely difficult to see. 

This invisible eye gap is a handicap when it comes to visual fissure and crack detection – and even more so, as dentists age. Therefore, the use of magnification devices is recommended to compensate visual deficiencies.⁵

Magnification enhances the dentist’s ability to diagnose caries and cracks in teeth^{6, 7, 8}, to distinguish better between colors, to differentiate between materials, tissues and substances and to detect interfaces.⁹
 
Dental microscopes – thanks to their magnification and co-axial illumination – are an especially great aid when it comes to crack and fracture detection, neither of which are visible to the naked eye nor palpable with an endodontic explorer.¹⁰ As a result, dentists can anticipate treatment long before coronal fractures and cracked teeth become symptomatic.⁹
 
For example, by using a microscope with 21x magnification, the resolution with which the eye sees increases up to 9.5 microns, allowing the eye to distinguish points separated by only 9.5 microns of distance. And therefore improving visual acuity to previous unreachable levels.