Having the
perfectly aligned sparkling white teeth is everyone’s desire. But if that comes
at the cost of visiting a dentist, clouds of fear or anxiety circle around the
mind. It doesn’t matter if one’s previous meetings with a dentist were good or
bad, every new meeting brings along some fear.
Needless to
say, dental checkups are necessary to ensure that the teeth are in their best
condition and tooth decay is kept at bay. Since a vast majority of people
including children are scared of visiting a dentist, sedation dentistry comes
to their rescue.
Sedation
dentistry involves the administration of oral sedatives that helps the patients
relax during dental procedures. It doesn’t matter if you have visited your
dentist for an invasive procedure or a simple tooth cleaning, sedation can be
used for anything. However, the severity of fear is a key determinant of how much
the sedative needs to be administered.
Sedation is
used in a multitude of methods. The most common types of sedation used in
dentistry are as under:
1. Inhaled
sedation: As the name suggests, sedatives such as nitrous oxide combined
with oxygen is administered to the body via the nasal passage that helps you
relax. The dentist controls the level of gas that needs to be given to the
patient. This is the only type of dental sedation wherein you are conscious
enough to drive yourself home post-treatment.
2. Oral
sedation: Before proceeding with the treatment, the dentist analyses the
severity of a patient’s fear along with many interrelated factors. Sedation
ranges from minimal to moderate. In the case of minimal oral sedation, a sedative
pill is given to the patient usually half an hour before the procedure.
Moderate sedation has a very mild anesthetic effect on a person making him feel
groggy sometimes. But a gentle shake is enough to put all the grogginess at
bay!
3. IV
Moderate sedation: This type of sedation is intravenous. The sedative is
administered in the patient’s body via veins thus it works more quickly.
Dentists can properly manage the amount of sedative to be administered. Mild
dizziness can happen due to the sedative which eventually fades away in some
time.
4. Deep
sedation and general anesthesia: Dentists usually administer this type of
sedation to the patients who are either very scared of the dental procedure or
whose procedure is likely to take a lot of time. As the sedative is given to
the patient, he might either be almost unconscious or totally unconscious. The
procedure hence becomes painless and the effects of anesthesia wear off or are reversed
with medication.
Sedatives
make the entire dental procedure painless and comfortable without causing any
harm to the body. For anyone who has the real fear of visiting a dentist can
still, get the dental checkup and procedure done right without any pain and
discomfort via sedation dentistry.
