Sedation In Dentistry

A lot of people avoid visiting the dentist for fear of having to undergo a painful procedure. This anxiety is quite common and leads to a delay in treatment that can prove to be more painful, costly, and time-consuming.

Sedation Dentistry- How is sedation used in dentistry?

Sedation in dentistry helps you and your nerves feel relaxed, calm and comfortable during a dental procedure. It is a conscious level of sedation so you are technically still aware of what is going on aside from IV sedation, because of its amnesia effect, you will not be able to remember most of how the procedures went.

The three most common type of sedation used in dentistry are:

• Nitrous Oxide Sedation– also called laughing gas. This type of sedation normally offers to the kids but also adults. This is to help them with their fear of dentists. This level of sedation is a combination of oxygen and nitrous that gives patients a tingling sensation and also numbness throughout the body. Like mentioned above, patients are still able to communicate with the dentist throughout.
• Oral Sedation– This type of sedation takes at least an hour or so before it starts to work. This is when a patient is given a sedative tablet and waits for the medication to kick-in. Because this is the most unpredictable type of sedation, there are cases where a patient does not feel or is not sedated at all after an hour of taking the pill so the dentist has to delay the procedure or move it to a different day or he might recommend doing I.V sedation instead for a quicker and predictable result.
• V Sedation– Intravenous sedation has the fastest response out of the three mentioned because the medications are being dispensed straight to the patient’s vein. For this one, patients will undergo stages where sometimes they can fall half asleep but are still responsive to commands yet patients will not remember all of what happened after the medications are administered. This is called anterograde amnesia where patients experience memory loss because of the medications given.

With any of these types of sedation, doctors are still going to use needles and local anesthetic before performing any dental treatments. Some patients are misinformed or assume that once they undergo a sedation, there will be no more needle which is definitely wrong. Doctors still use LA and sedation combinations to perform any dental treatments that the patient needs. Talk to your dentist to learn more of these sedation options.