On Thursday, Dr. Jose Arauz, a Jacksonville periodontist and founder of Carolina Dental Specialty Center, is set to conclude his five-month local outreach program designed to educate Jacksonville dentists on the benefits of robotic dentistry, as well as offer his practice as a resource as it remains one of the few in the country certified to use Yomi — the only FDA-cleared robot-assisted dental surgery system in the U.S.
Referred to as “Lunch and Learns,” Arauz will visit his eighth and final practice in the Jacksonville area since December, where he has been educating local dentists of the benefits that robotic dentistry can have on patients requiring dental implants, including shorter surgeries, quicker recovery times and less pain — setting a new standard for dental implant procedures in eastern North Carolina.
“It’s extremely important that other dentists in the Jacksonville area are aware of the benefits associated with robotic dentistry,” said Arauz, who has been using Yomi for dental implant surgeries for more than two years. “Using robotics for dental implant procedures allows us to perform complete full arch surgeries in about 90 minutes and dual arch surgery in about 2.5 hours. This translates to faster surgery, faster recovery and ultimately less pain for their patients. We want other dentists to know that this capability, while rare, is available to their patients right here in Jacksonville.”
According to Carolina DSC, their practice is the first and only in eastern North Carolina to use Yomi. To date, Arauz has performed procedures using the Yomi robotic system on 147 patients, including 219 dental implants installed.
“Dentistry, like all medical fields, is constantly changing and evolving,” said Dr. Jeff Scott, founder of Crystal Coast Dentistry in Cape Carteret. “Having someone in our area like Dr. Arauz who is staying in step with the latest advancements in medical technology doesn’t just benefit his practice; it helps all dentists in the Jacksonville area who trust him with the health and wellbeing of our patients.”
“[Arauz] is very thorough and has equipment that I’ve never seen before in a periodontist office,” said Fred Beacham, a patient of Carolina DSC who underwent an immediate implant placement using the Yomi robotic system. “Dr. Arauz is the best I’ve had over the past 15 years and I’ve been in a [dentist] chair for quite a few years.”
Utilizing robotics within dental implant surgeries allow patients at Carolina DSC to experience quicker, sometimes same-day procedures, which reduces recovery time and pain. Yomi offers haptic guidance to assist dental surgeons with placing implants, erradicating small, involuntary movements often experienced when performing surgery manually.
Yomi also features collaborative surgical planning tools, allowing for 3-D renderings of the patient’s procedure to be uploaded into Yomi’s software, providing a digital gameplan for the robotic system that allows for accurate and precise implant placement during surgery.
Yomi Robot-Assisted Dental Systems were designed by Neocis, which has partnered with avant-garde dental surgeons across the U.S., including Arauz, to establish robot-assisted dental surgery as the new standard of care for dental implants. Yomi is the first and only robot-assisted dental surgery system to be commercially available in the country.