Active Noise Cancelling Headphones for Dental Work, Opinions Please :)

Hi, how do you feel about using ANC headphones during dental work? Do they help you? Do they lower the loudness of the dental work a bit? How about the occlusion effect, do they cause it?

I need to take off glue from my teeth and the only way is through drilling or polishing it out. We can't do much about noise coming through the teeth but at least we could do something about the "outside" external noise. I've read about using ANC headphones but opinions are mixed, some people say that they work by cutting out the perceived volume by 20-25% and some say that they worsen the tinnitus.

What is your experience?

I have hyperacusis so everything that can help is welcome here.

 

I've tried it and they are very ineffective, as they reduce low frequency sound, whereas the drill has high frequencies. Also a lot of the sound you hear when the drill is in your mouth is from bone conduction.

Your best bet is to find a dentist who uses dental lasers and who also has electric-powered (as opposed to the noisier air-powered) drills. If your cavity is between teeth, the dentist won't be able to use a laser. The dentist can still use the electric-powered drill at low RPM setting. Sometime during the procedure they might have to increase the RPM, but most of it could usually be done at the low RPM. The problem is that in my experience Most dentists won't work at low RPM, as it takes considerably more time. So the most important thing you can do, is find a dentist who takes you and your tinnitus Seriously. If you find a dentist like that, you can also ask them to drill for at most 5 seconds and follow that with a 10 second break. Of course this would triple the drilling time, but that used to be the advice on American Tinnitus Association's website (they had since removed this advice from the site, not sure why). The dentists are hesitant to do this, even when you offer to pay them for the extra time. It is likely that this advice is for when the dentist is using a normal drill (air-powered) at normal RPM (high), so if you find a dentist willing to run an electric-powered drill at low RPM, but who forgets about that "5 second rule", it might be ok to not insist on the use of that rule.

To summarize, if your cavity could be fixed with a laser, that is ideal. In that case you would want to wear Peltor muffs (you probably wouldn't want to wear earplugs due to the occlusion effect). Note that even with the laser, some use of the drill is unavoidable, as the drill has to be used to shape the new filling. Try to find a dentist who won't dismiss your tinnitus concerns who owns an electric-powered drill that he or she is willing to run at low RPM most of the time. That sound is a lot less disturbing than the sound of a drill that is running at high RPM. Another thing you might want to do is not do multiple jobs at once. Do one cavity and then let your ears rest and come back another day to do another cavity.

Good luck!

 

It's not the cavity i have to do, I have glue from orthodontic braces glued to my teeth. I need to drill or polish it out, we can use 20.000 RPM electric drill to do that but it's still loud I thought about using ANC headphones as they're good for low frequencies and this 20.000 RPM drill have somewhat low frequency sound. What do you think about that? It's fine to try them?

 

I used noise cancelling headphones. It helped but not much. Most dental offices are still in the dark ages. They don't want to invest in new technology. You might have more luck in a larger city (for laser and electric powered drills). I finally found a dentist with a "quieter" drill but it was still really loud. But, a previous dental drill was even worse. It was hell.

 

Ask your doctor to use the lowest possible RPM, and use it for at most 5 seconds, followed by 10 second pauses. Look into whether that glue could be removed using a laser.

You should try it both with and without your noise cancelling headphones. I bet you will conclude that it makes no difference. I would choose Peltor muffs over noise cancelling headphones, but even that would probably make no difference.

 

Glue cannot be removed by laser sadly, it's stronger than teeth.

 

I had braces removed prior to the tinnitus. I doubt a laser can be used, as the glue needs to be polished off. The sound was kind of loud, but it was in the lower frequencies as far I remember. I think that noise cancelling headphones would help. I would not use ear muffs as it would increase the sound due to the occlusion effect.

 

It would seem to me that the occlusion effect would happen when one wears NC headphones too. Since the walls of the muffs are further from one's ears than the cups of the headphones, I would expect the occlusion effect to be less of an issue when one wears the muffs. But it is easy enough to try all three of one's options (muffs, headphones, and nothing). Just be prepared that all three are similar...

 

What do you then? Or what would you do, Bill?

 

I've had dental work done after the onset of my tinnitus. When the dentist is using a laser, muffs help to reduce the noise. When the dentist is using a drill I found that muffs and earplugs don't make much of a difference (most of the noise is coming from the inside of the body), so I would not wear anything. I asked my doctor to run the drill at the lowest RPM possible and to take breaks as often as possible.

 

Have anyone tried different sized earmuffs to see if the occlusion effect might be mitigated during dental visits?

An interesting graph is found here, which seems to imply that muffs with volume more than 300cm^3 would significantly reduce the occlusion effect, but would be interesting to know if anyone have done some testing in real time scenarios;

http://www.protectear.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/earlog19.pdf

 

@Snake, how did your dental work go? What did you end up using for ear protection?

Getting ready for my dental cleaning... hopefully no cavities.

 

I ended up with severe worsening...

Residual glue is stronger than a tooth.

 

Oh no, I am so sorry to hear that and I hope you are doing ok considering. It's too bad they couldn't just leave the glue on your teeth (although I'm sure they had good reason to remove it).

I hope your tinnitus improves and that's the last of dental work you'll need for the foreseeable future.

 

That sucks @Snake. I hope your tinnitus improves. We're here for you!

 

Sorry to hear it worsened.

Did you end up using some kind of ear protection while doing it, and did this happen even with electric drill on low RPM?

 

Electric drill, low RPM, no protection.

 

Really scary... And you got not only a temporary spike, but permanent worsening?

Did you have to drill for a very long time at the same session?

 

Yes, permanent worsening. Oral steroids afterwards did nothing, I even went to the hospital for IV steroids.

It was louder than normal drilling because glue is harder than a tooth. The duration of the drilling didn't help, 5 seconds of drilling followed by a 10-second pause.

FML.

 

I tried earplugs and Bose NC headphones. Both sounded the same -- I actually felt things were louder with the NC headphones. In the end, it was less loud or less scary without any ear protection (who really want to hear thru headphones the concert of their teeth getting drilled?) -- the sound was more diffuse without the headphones on, even if loudness wise it was probably the same (my guess is that sound via bone conduction is loudest when it hits inner ear before exiting the outer ear into the ear muff... I'm planning to ask my ENT tomorrow, actually, because I have non-tinnitus-related outer ear pain). I did not bring my Peltors but I imagine those would have equally sucked.

Xanax and dentist taking breaks. I will never get any dental procedure done (other than a manual cleaning) without at least 0.25 mg of Xanax in me and a patient dentist.