Sometimes you just need the sedation process to help your kids relax in a dentist chair and other times, the procedure simply calls for the child to be sedated. Either way, it is an effective way to help your child through a dental procedure. This is a fantastic procedure for children with special needs or children who have severe anxiety when it comes to dentists’ offices.

Our staff provides children with the most tender care and love, our team offers different levels of and types of sedation methods that help ease your child’s nerves.

Sedative procedures help your child relax or put them to sleep completely which helps them avoid associating any negative feelings with visiting the dentist. One of the easiest benefits to realize is that sedation dentistry allows children to undergo procedures that would otherwise make them highly uncomfortable. Your child can receive important dental care that would otherwise be out of the question if the child was not sedated. Depending on your pediatric dentist and your child’s medical history, different techniques will be used to help your child relax.

There are four known levels of sedation for children: minimal sedation, moderate sedation, deep sedation, and general. Minimal sedation simply means your child will be awake and see everything that happens, but they will not feel anything. In a more moderate sedation experience, your child will once again be awake but they will have trouble remembering everything that happened during the procedure. For children with special requirements sedation is a good option to help acclimate them to the situation. Along with sedation, there are special sedatives that are used:

• Inhaled sedation is mild and is a laughing gas combined with oxygen for your child
• There are also oral sedation methods that are taken minutes to hours before the procedure. Dosages can be changed to either keep your child awake but less alert or completely put them under.
• An IV sedation is possible and works much more quickly than an oral sedative.
• Deep sedation takes your child completely under and they never have a memory of the procedure.

Typically, even as adults, if you wait and expect something to be miserable, chances are it will be. The same goes for children, if they are sitting and anticipating the dentist visit to be excruciatingly painful and unbearable, they will have built it so much in their minds that the situation will, ,be unbearable. So, how do we combat this? Prevent the child from experiencing the situation altogether. Sedation dentistry helps your child from ever becoming incredibly afraid of the dentist.

When your child isn’t crying, closing their mouth, moving around, or whatever else, the treatment plan can be much more effective. When the patient is sedated, the dentist has a better chance of being quick and thorough. When your dentist can work uninterrupted the quality of work performed is much better and long-lasting.

Dental anxiety is common in a reported 75% of American people and the majority claim it started from a traumatic childhood experience. Whether it was too painful or simply too scary, the point is that sedation dentistry is effective to help avoid fearing children grow into fearing adults.

Not only is the benefit of sedation dentistry the simple idea that your child can avoid growing into a fearing adult, but the procedures are also much more effective. If your child is still, the dentist has a better opportunity at being patient and thorough with his work. Because sedation leaves your child with little to no memory of the procedure, the chances of your child experiencing a traumatic procedure or visit decrease exponentially.

Getting your child, the best dental care from an early age is important and as parents we want our children to continue to have good dental care even through adulthood. Sedation dentistry works, not only will the visit be smoother but they will not develop a fearing attitude.