Abstract
This chapter aims to provide a general description of dentistry, nanotechnology, and dental engineering, as well as to define the interdependencies between these areas and indicate the prospects for their development in relation to the current requirements of modern times and ethical imperatives. Oral disease affects approximately 3 to 5 billion people worldwide. There are currently two views in the world about the dental care paradigm. One of them, criticizing the excessive development of interventional dentistry, places particular emphasis on prevention and waiting for its development. This is accompanied by efforts to limit sugar consumption by limiting sugar production and introducing price restrictions similar to the distribution of alcohol and tobacco products. Many of these postulates cannot be questioned. However, the second view of the authors of this chapter assumes a balanced and even development in the next decades of three aspects; that is, prophylaxis, interventional dentistry along with the accompanying development of dental engineering using the current state of the industrial revolution in this field of Dentistry 4.0, and providing safety systems for dentists, auxiliary staff and patients in accordance with the SPEC strategy initiated by the authors of this chapter. Dentistry 4.0 is characterized by progress in the field of dental engineering and covers issues related to dentistry, materials engineering, material process technology, and manufacturing engineering, including additive technologies, computer-aided design and production of CAD/CAM along with computer-aided medical imaging, issues of tissue engineering and computer science, automation, and robotics, including means of production, machines and technological devices used in the performance of prosthetic restorations and implanted products, as well as in medical procedures during procedures performed by dentists. Medical imaging is an integral part of the overall approach and includes intraoral and extraoral scanning, especially CBCT conical beam computed tomography. Particular attention was paid to nanodentistics as an area of nanotechnology applications in dentistry that covers the application of new nanomaterials, nanotechnologies, and nanodevices, including nanobots, also known as dental nanobots or dentifrobots, and an innovative next-generation paradigm of diagnosis and treatment of oral diseases that can solve the irremovable problems of traditional dentistry. General human ethics, mainly medical and dental ethics, along with engineering ethics is considered paramount in all efforts of professional dentists and engineers to provide oral health care at the highest level currently possible, in line with the political and economic trends of each country.
