RE: [RC] Dental Equipment for horses - Susan E. Garlinghouse, DVM
Keeping in mind this is just my opinion (though based on having
floated a whole lot of horses and taking some pride in doing a good job on them),
There are a lot of different brands, makes and models of power
dental equipment, but you might also want to consider that it will be very
difficult for your friend in Egypt to ever get repairs done if
needed. Most of the units need to be rebuilt from time to time and it aint
cheap or fast. The general concensus with the rechargeable units is that
they don’t have the power required. You’d think that would
make them ‘safer’ because the head isn’t turning as quickly,
but a slower grind takes longer and tends to build up more heat, thus overall
increasing the likelihood of thermal damage. There are some very
fancy-shmancy units that have a built-in water irrigation unit to cool the
tooth as you grind, but I’ve also heard they aren’t very sturdy,
nor are they available as a rechargeable unit. If you know what you’re
doing, thermal damage isn’t an issue even with the non-built-in
irrigation units (you just don’t ever grind at one spot for more than a
few seconds, and you hand irrigate a lot. Duh). Plus the overall irrigation-and-vacuum
unit is over eight grand for everything, and is enormous compared to other
units like a Powerfloat---thus not easily transportable from one place to
another. At least in my vet truck, space was at a premium and dental
equipment that fit into the size of a large briefcase was doable, while a case
the size of a large ice chest was definitely not.
I would absolutely stay away from the reciprocal units, the ones
that go back and forth versus circular. Hard to get the back hooks even
when you know what you’re doing, and much easier to cause significant
bruising to the tissue at the back of the mouth. I’ve played around
with them, but was never happy with the angle of the bevel I could get compared
to the circular head units.
The other thing to consider is that learning to float teeth,
manually or with a power unit, isn’t an overnight process, and there are
a lot of major mistakes that can be made with both manual and power
tools. The primary difference is that because the manual tools take a
little bit off at a time, it’s much less likely the cutting edge will get
away from you and take off more tooth than you really had planned. It doesn’t
mean you can’t do a piss-poor job with hand tools—believe me, I’ve
seen horrible mouths that were just hack jobs regardless of the tools
used---but you can do a bad job faster and to a greater extreme with power
tools. Hand tools will take you longer to do a bad job, but can also be
used to really screw up a horse’s mouth. I appreciate Linda’s
comments about totally smooth-mouthed horses after power tools being used on
them, but I’ve seen the same thing following a manual float. The
imbecile holding the tools just has to be more determined to totally screw up
the horse using the hand tools, but there are a lot of persistent imbeciles out
there calling themselves dentists or dental technicians or tooth fairies or
whatever.
Given your situation, it will be harder for your guy to learn to
do a good mouth without someone to mentor him as he progresses, both short and
long term, and show him the little tricks of angles, etc. If he wants to
give it a try, then I like the Powerfloat equipment better than anything else I’ve
handled. It’s heavier, thus takes more muscle, and doesn’t
come with onboard irrigation, but is sturdy, very portable and fairly
reasonable price-wise compared to some. I think in the $3000 range or so,
if your farrier already has the hand tools, speculum, etc. They have a
rechargeable model, but I wouldn’t recommend it, it just doesn’t
have adequate power.
However, given the issues associated with being in Cairo, he/you
might end up being better off sticking with hand tools (and getting his blades
resharpened often, I’ve seen a bunch of tools that have never had a blade
changed since the Kennedy administration.)
JMO.
Susan Garlinghouse, DVM
From:
ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Maryanne Gabbani Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 12:22 PM To: Ridecamp; Discussion forum for Horse fanciers Subject: [RC] Dental Equipment for horses
To start off with, there are no horse dentists in Egypt and
probably none any closer than France. Our farrier does a pretty good job
(better than the vet actually) and he was asking today about electric tools for
doing the floating. Now, my immediate private response was that while electric
tools make the job easier, they also make it easier to make bigger mistakes.
Maybe I'm just being an alarmist, but I thought that I'd consult the list for
some wisdom. Is this a good idea? What sort of things would be recommended if
he were to buy something? We have 220 electricity so something rechargeable
might be good.
