The Sedation Dental Care Standard

The standard of treating patients using sedation was set by physicians in the U.S. approximately 40 years ago . It is nothing new for patients to be sedated for operations on knees, feet, wrists, ears, noses, or practically anything else. A lady told me the other day, "I had to go in for an MRI (a type of x-ray). I was very nervous so my doctor sedated me." Often patients ask dentists for sedation and the dentists do everything they can to talk them out of it. Most dentists do not want to go through the additional training and accreditation process that is necessary to sedate patients.

You wouldn't think of having an ear operation or a nose operation without sedation. But, you move one inch to the teeth and it becomes acceptable to endure time-consuming, strenuous, noisy, and uncomfortable procedures on the most sensitive, personal part of the body (the mouth) with no sedation. Dentists attempt to work outside of the already established standard of using sedation. As a result, we as dentists treat only 50% of the population while physicians treat over 90%.

I have found that fearful patients psychologically have no problem being sedated for dental treatment. You ask a nervous patient, "Would you rather have this work done in six appointments over the next two months or in one appointment while you sleep?", and they look at you like you're crazy. "Put me to sleep," is their reply.

Sedation for certain types of dental care has been used for over thirty years. If you asked one hundred patients who have had their wisdom teeth removed how they had it done, most would say they were put to sleep by an oral surgen to have them removed. The problem is that dentists assume that root canals and drilling on teeth is not comfortable enough to warrant sedation. This is why 50% of the population does not go to the dentist. The patient is the one who should determine what is uncomfortable for them, not the dentist.

Type of Sedation

The sedation we utilize is oral sedation (pills). We use pills for several reasons:

1. Many of our patients are needle-phobic so they would not like to be told that we must use a needle to sedate them.
   
2. With oral sedation we can work on patients for a longer period of time.
   
3. Oral sedation is very safe.
   
4. The pills stay in a patients system for several hours after the appointment, so we get few complaints of pain after procedures are completed.

By Dr. Dan Davidian