Dental Scaredy-Cat? Dentists Can Help You with It

It doesn’t matter how friendly or how much of a chatterbox a dentist is; or how cozy and comfy his office and clinic feels, there will always be people who couldn’t shake off their fear of even the simplest of dental procedures, such as harmless checkups.

The effects of dental anxiety makes it hard for both the patient to cooperate and the dentist to facilitate oral health procedure and care. However, dentists have several ways of easing the jitters from their patients to help them relax.

One method is via sedation dentistry. Sedation dentistry is useful for fearful patients who do not want to stay awake at all during the entire procedure – they want to be “out of it”, and they don’t want to remember anything, most especially, the pain.

Dentists can choose from either IV or GA sedation. IV (AKA intravenous) sedation works by inducing some sort of a “twilight sleep” on the patient where he stays conscious but is deemed to forget everything that went on. You’re half awake, and half out of it, but it gets the job done. A general anesthetic (GA) is the most common method used to keep consciousness intact, but takes away the ability to feel pain.

Either way, both methods are effective and are still being used today. If you couldn’t shake off that fear even of an otherwise super friendly dentist, ask her or him for anesthetic options and find out which would best suit you.