Dental curettes have a variety of uses from scraping deposits off of teeth to removing endotoxins on the surface of roots. With gingival curettage, an area of inflamed tissue is removed from a periodontal pocket. With periapical curettage, curettes are used to remove soft tissue which has become diseased from the area around a tooth's root or smoothing the crown of a tooth. Surgical curettage in dentistry involves removal of a periodontal pocket which is inflamed and then reattaching tissue to teeth.
The tips of curettes come in different shapes and various sizes in order to aid in removing different sizes of deposits on teeth. However, the tip will always be rounded to ensure that cleaning does not traumatize subgingival tissue. To use dental curettes, the terminal shank should be held parallel to the long side of the tooth being worked on. In order to make this possible, curettes for dentistry come in various angles to suit the posterior or anterior teeth.
There are two main classifications of curettes for dentistry: universal and Gracey. Universal curettes are used in dentistry to remove small and medium-sized deposits. Gracey curettes are used for removing light deposits and endotoxins.
Universal dental curettes consist of a curved blade that is at a 90 degree angle to its shank. The blade is sharp on both sides. Because of the angle and dual-sidedness of the curette, they can be used on both the mesial and the distal side of a tooth. Thus, only two types of universal dental curettes are necessary for removing medium to small deposits: posterior and anterior.
Gracey dental curettes were invented by the Doctor Clayton Gracey along with the assistance of Hugo Friedman in the 1940s. They have a curved blade which is at a 70 degree angle to the shank and are only sharp on one side. This gives Gracey curettes a lower cutting edge along with an upper edge which is non-cutting. Since only one side of Gracey curettes is able to cut, they are used for site-specific dental work. Thus, there are several types of Gracey curettes: posterior mesial, posterior distal, and anterior curettes.
The Gracey curettes for dentistry are further broken down into site-specific uses:
- ½, ¾, 5/6: Used on anterior sextants
- 7/8 and 9/10: Used on buccal and lingual areas of posterior teeth
- 11/12 and 15/16: Used on mesial areas of posterior teeth
- 13/14 and 17/18: Used on distal areas of posterior teeth
Gracey dental curettes are best for more precise work whereas the universal curettes can be applied when removing larger calculus deposits from teeth. Additionally, there are implant curettes and surgical curettes used in dentistry which have the same specifications as Gracey and universal curettes.
When choosing dental curettes, it is important for a dentist to consider how they will fit into the hand while in use. Because curettage requires such precision work, the handle of dental curettes is as equally as important as the blade. It is worth investing in ergonomically designed dental curettes such as those with silicone handles.
