My dentist provides laser whitening or power bleaching with a light. What is that?
Laser whitening as originally offered by dentists included real laser treatment. However actual lasers are rarely used today because the high heat of the laser caused tooth damage. Instead dentists use a curing light. This procedure involves placing bleaching gel on the teeth, propping the mouth open and using a curing light for an hour or so while in the dentist chair. The advantage to this procedure is that the bleaching effect is immediate, (However it is not permanent, you will still need to do maintenance bleaching.) This procedure is still called laser whitening and is also called power bleaching, or sometimes, surgical whitening. Recent studies have shown that the curing light actually does little to enhance the bleaching. It is actually the high strength of the gel that turns the teeth white.
