Sedation dentistry promises an experience most memorable because of how perfectly forgettable it is, but some experts have concerns about safety. If you hate having dental work done, this may be just the thing you’ve been waiting for to get your crowns done, your fillings filled or your otherwise miserable experience (by your estimation, not ours) over with before you even know it’s begun. For many, the very experience of going to the dentist is the sort of thing of nightmares. Many don’t feel this way, but for those who do, it’s a very real emotional experience, and one that simple words can not mitigate.  You might put it off and put it off, and once it’s time to go the ramifications have crept up on you with a vengeance. Where you might have had an uncomfortable cleaning and a filling or two might now be a deep cleaning, four fillings and a crown. Can you deal with sitting in the chair for a solid hour or two with the drill whirring away as it breaks through your enamel, or worse still, an existing filling, just to get to the decay that lies beneath?As a teenager, I discovered a mediocre coping mechanism. I brought my Sony Walkman in with me and blasted School of Fish at top volume in vain attempts to drown out the drill. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it was what I had, and it almost did the trick. Still, the experience is palpable in my memory even today. But what if there was a way to experience less than that. Sure, the rock and roll is gone, but what if also could be gone the sound and the emotional experience of sitting in the chair? I drove a few friends home after having their wisdom teeth extracted, and all they suffered was a bit of groggy head from it. Why did they fare better from surgery than I did from a filling?

Turns out my question wasn’t as singular as I had suspected, and the answer was that much easier still… It’s called Sedation Dentistry, and not every dentist is in a position (in terms of safety, legality or qualification) to do it, but many are. At Dental Care Design, we are DOCS Certified, which means we are fully trained, certified and entirely ready to perform sedation dentistry. Sit back, relax, and wake up a few minutes later with the whole procedure behind you, regardless of what the procedure might have been.It’s also sometimes called oral conscious sedation, but it’s more commonly referred to as sedation dentistry. It’s easier than you can imagine. All you do is take a sedative pill like a Halcion an hour before your dental appointment, you know, to help you relax. When you get to the office, you may get more pills, depending on how well the first one worked on you and your metabolism. Imagine being oblivious to whatever it is that goes on while you’re sitting in the dental chair. That is the beauty of the approach. The next thing you know, you’re back home.

The American Dental Association (ADA) doesn’t have a problem with dentists administering a single dose of Halcion or similar drugs like Valium, but they do caution against multiple doses that could potentially give patients too much of a drug, causing them to be overly sedated — possibly even unconscious. The safety and success rates are as high or higher than that of any elective surgery, and it comes as no surprise. The event that’s being blanked out is not major surgery or honestly anything that couldn’t be weathered by bearing down, grinning and bearing it (if only grinning was possible). In most cases, it is not a general anesthesia (requiring an anesthesiologist or certified nurse anesthetist) but rather just a simple sedation to take the patient to another place for the duration of the procedure.In many cases sedation dentistry is covered by existing dental insurance plans, and when it isn’t, it’s very common that the extra cost can either be absorbed by the dental provider or paid out of pocket without any negative impact to the insurance payment policy. And let’s be honest, when it comes to the unprecedented comfort afforded by the luxury of opting to sit out your next dental visit, is there any price you wouldn’t pay?