sedation dentistry

There are a couple different types of sedation that we offer in our practice. For patients who are just mildly anxious, we can prescribe them a valium and they just take that on their own, and they come to the office for treatment. For patients who are a little bit more nervous, we can give them some nitrous oxide, which is laughing gas, and so they can come to their appointments and leave and they won't feel any ill effects. They just can't drive. For patients who are a little bit more nervous, we can offer them either oral sedation, which is oral conscious sedation. So they take a couple of pills in our office, about an hour before the appointment, they get sleepy, they won't remember some of the procedure. They have to have somebody take them home and they'll likely fall asleep during the procedure, but they're just conscious. For patients who really want to be asleep for the procedure entirely, that's when we bring in IV sedation. So we'll just go intravenous. We'll bring in an anesthesiologist to place the IV, the dentist will do the dentistry, you wake up, and everything's finished, and you won't remember anything. You just have to have somebody pick you up. Sedation can be a huge value for our patients who are either apprehensive or nervous about the treatment or having a lot of treatment done in one visit and want to have everything done, and just wake up, and walk out the door, and know that everything is finished. The most common type of sedation in our office depends on the patient. So we do a lot of nitrous oxide for patients who are just minimally fearful or anxious, and we do lots of IV sedation for our bigger treatments. And in between there, we have our patients who do the oral sedation. That works really well just to take the edge off. In order to provide dental anesthesia in New York state, you have to have a special license and special training. So we have that here in our office. We have oral sedation and we also have anesthesiologists that come in to sedate patients more heavily, but basically you have to have the right training for that. I think there's a huge benefit for dental sedation because over 50% of the population is very apprehensive and anxious about going to the dentist so they don't even go. And if they know that they can go to a place that they actually can be sedated and treated comfortably, then that's a huge asset for them and for the practice because we're able to help people that otherwise we wouldn't be able to help. My father was a general anesthesiologist as well as a practicing dentist. So a lot of our patients have already had that and that's what they want. And so when I came on board, I was making sure that we continued that. So we have an anesthesiologist come in for those treatments, but we're able to target patients who otherwise wouldn't be able to. In addition, we're able to do more complex procedures in a short amount of time because when patients are asleep, it's just a lot easier to treat, honestly.