Oral Sedation and Dentistry
Oral conscious sedation has been an extremely positive experience for many of our patients. I would like to share a recent example.
A middle-aged woman “Kathy” (fictitious name) presented to our office with a dental history of poor experiences. Her care was mostly just emergency-based and “nothing” was ever “finished”. Her immediate concerns were several broken teeth and bleeding gums. Most of these broken teeth had root canals but she had never returned for crowns since the pain was gone.
Kathy informed us she was subject to panic attacks and appeared to have a hard time sitting in the chair. A complete oral exam, including medical history review, full Xrays and photos was completed. It was determined that several teeth were hopeless and required extraction. Several other teeth could be saved with crowns and the missing teeth could be replaced with implants. Her periodontal situation required 4 quadrants of root planning and scaling.
The risks and benefits of different treatments were discussed with Kathy and a customized treatment plan was formulated. She really wanted all the treatment done in as few visits as possible. With the help of sedation a treatment that normally would take 10 visits would be performed over 2 3-hour visits.
Kathy’s treatment went extremely well and at follow-up, she brought us all little gifts and let us know that everything exceeded her expectations. “I don’t remember much of the visits and I’m so happy everything got fixed over so few visits.”