Ozone : A New Revolution in Dentistry.

Abstract

Ozone is a natural gaseous molecule made up of three oxygen atoms. The word ozone originates from the Greek word ozein, which means odor and was first used by German chemist Christian Friedrich Schonbein, father of ozone therapy (1799-1868) in 1840 when, working with a voltaic pile in the presence of oxygen, noticed the emergence of a gas with an “electric and pungent smell” that could be a sort of “super-active oxygen”.[1] Industrial ozone generators are used for industrial application and disinfection of water, after it was shown the potent and broad bactericidal activity of ozone. The first medical application seems to have been the use of ozone for treating gaseous, post-traumatic gangrene in German soldiers during the 1st world war.[2] However a big step forward was the invention of a reliable ozoniser for medical use by the physicist Joachim Hansler (1908-1981). The idea to use ozone in medicine developed slowly during the last century and it was stimulated by the lack of antibiotics and the disinfectant properties of ozone. Ozone, which is used for medical purposes, is a gas mixture comprised of 95 to 99.95% oxygen and 0.05 to 5% pure ozone. Due to proven therapeutic advantages of ozone, many fields in dentistry could benefit from ozone therapy. From the historical data, the first dentist who used ozone was Edward Fisch in 1950 when he healed Austrian surgeon Ernst Payr for a gangrenous pulpite and thereby inspired him to begin a line of investigations dedicated to ozone use in health care, reported his results at the 59th Congress of the German Surgical Society in Berlin (1935) and wrote: “which other disinfectant would be tolerated better than ozone? The positive results in 75% of patients, the simplicity, the hygienic conditions and innocuity of the method are some of the many advantages