Dental Headlight: Is It Safe Or Harmful For The Eyes?
Your efficiency as a dental care provider as well as the quality of the service you render, the accuracy of your diagnosis, and the type of treatment that you carry out will all depend on how well you see the oral cavity. This is why you have to make sure that you use the dental headlight that can provide your work area with the right quality and quantity of illumination. However, despite this fact, many young dentists are still apprehensive when it comes to using dental headlight because of the supposed hazard it can cause to the user's eyes. But, can dental LED headlight really harm your vision?
The dental headlights technology is rapidly changing. A few decades ago, dentists only use the lights with fiber optic tether that are being attached or placed on the countertop. They also only use the headlamp for complicated surgical procedures. As the technology gets more advanced year after year, there were also some advancements in the field of dentistry. One of these remarkable developments is the creation of portable dental LED headlights.
Is dental headlight safe for the eyes?
The answer to whether the dental headlight is safe or harmful to your eyes greatly depends on its type and quality. Properly designed and perfectly fitted dental headlamps are safe for your eyes. However, just like poorly constructed dental magnification optical aids such as the surgical loupes and dental microscope, improperly designed and low quality LED dental headlights can harm your eyes.
Both the blue spectrum of light and the ultraviolet light are known to be harmful to the eyes. If you get exposed to them especially for longer periods of time, your vision will suffer. There are currently three styles of dental headlights that you can find in the market.
- Neutral LED - has a blue spectrum that is the same with the green spectrum.
- Cool LED- has a blue spectrum that is a bit stronger as compared to the green spectrum.
- Extreme Cool LED- has a blue spectrum that is much stronger than the green spectrum
When purchasing a new dental headlight, make it a point to pick the one that offers cool and neutral LED lights. Elevated blue spectrum such as that of the extreme cool LED light does not only cause color distortion, it can as well be dangerous to the eyes.
Uniformed focus beam
Choosing a dental LED headlight that offers a uniformed focus beam will not only allow you to ease free image distortion, it will as well help you get rid of eye fatigue. The achromatic multi-lens optics can provide you with a uniformed focus beam. Because it produces an illumination that has no color separation or bright spots, it is considered as the safest choice for LED dental headlight. On the other hand, as much as possible avoid using a headlight with a beam that is constructed using single-lens optics. This type of beam is considered as the most dangerous choice because of its elevated blue spectrum which is visible to the human eyes.