Dental Anxiety

Any examination or procedure that involves a person’s mouth and dentition has a high potential to produce anxiety.

Although there is a certain objectivity to dental procedures – the bottom line assessment of where they stand on the scale from mild annoyance to intolerable is primarily in the eye of the beholder – the patient.

The goal of patient-centered treatment is to provide the desired and necessary procedures as comfortably and as efficiently and as simply as possible.

Simple means taking time to understand and explain what a patient’s needs are and what a reasonable approach for that patient entails.

Simple means taking time to administer a local anesthetic injection (“Novocaine”) in a gentle, staged manner and making sure it is effective before any attempt at treatment is initiated.

Sedative Approach to Dental Treatment

If this simple straightforward approach of local anesthetic administration is impractical or ineffective it is feasible for a dental practitioner with appropriate training and experience to provide anti-anxiety and sedative medications to the patient to allow a needed procedure to be accomplished. This Sedation for Dentistry can be accomplished via wide range of sedative medications and different routes of administration. The sedation approach is determined by the patient’s specific treatment needs and wishes.

Sedation for Dentistry

There are a wide variety of sedative medications and ways in which they are administered. The specific approach is determined by the needs of the patient and the requirements of the treatment.

Typically if a careful measured attempt to treat with local anesthesia is inadequate patient anxiety can be minimized with oral medications such as Valium, Versed, Halcion, etc. These medicines can be made more effective when combined with nitrous oxide (aka “sweet air” or “laughing gas”).

Sedation for Dentistry can also be administered intravenously. This route of administration allows a more accurate titration of sedative effect to a patient’s needs and also allows the use of medications that allow a more rapid recovery.