An ultrasonic scaler costs on average £1,700, making it worth choosing one carefully. But shopping around can be time-consuming, as most stores only stock a few of the 14 manufacturers active in the UK market. We have rounded up all the ultrasonic scalers units available, so you can choose one quickly and easily.

Ultrasonic scalers use high frequency vibrations to clean teeth, gums and dental implants. They are distinguished from sonic scaling units, such as from KaVo and Titan, by the frequency of the oscillations, with sonic scalers oscillating around 6kHz and ultrasonic in the 20-30kHz range. The higher the frequency, the less audible is the scaler.

Handpiece compatibility is an important consideration when buying an ultrasonic scaler as handpieces are frequency-specific and are not always compatible across units from different manufacturers, even if the units are of the same type (see below).

Ultrasonic scalers come either as standalone units or in a bare-bones style for integration into a cabinet. Integrated scalers, such as the DTE V3 and UDS-N3 are cheaper but are not covered in this article.

Theoretically, an unshielded pacemaker can be disrupted by magnetostrictive scalers, and many manufacturers say in their saftey guidelines not to use their scaler on patients with pacemakers. Nowadays however all pacemakers are shielded so this risk is probably negligible.