Feeling anxious about dental treatment?

Some potential patients break out in a nervous sweat at the mere thought of scheduling a dental checkup. The idea of allowing tools like dental drills and cleaning instruments makes them squeamish, and surgical procedures are even more anxiety-inducing.

If severe fear keeps you away from the dentist’s office, you are not alone. Millions of people across the country share that fear, which also discourages many Dallas County patients from regular visits to their dentists. In fact, there’s even a technical term for the phenomenon—odontophobia.

Dentists have a wider variety of tools in their collection for maximizing patient comfort, so wariness about pain should no longer keep patients out of the dentist’s chair. Local anesthetics are highly effective and more readily reversible than in years past, and dental professionals are highly concerned with patients’ well-being during appointments.

Despite these advances, some patients remain reluctant to get dental care. Sedation dentistry is a common technique that helps patients overcome such dental fears. With sedation dentistry, patients are placed in a state of deep relaxation. Dentists often use a class of anti-anxiety drugs known as benzodiazepines to achieve this effect. The drugs can be administered intravenously or in pill form for those patients who have an aversion to needles in addition to dentists.

Although sedation dentistry is sometimes referred to as sleep dentistry, that is a misnomer. While under sedation, the patient remains conscious, which allows the patient to respond to the dentist’s commands and leaves the airway uncompromised. In this way, sedation dentistry is safer than general anesthesia.

Another benefit of sedation dentistry is that the patient does not have any recollection of the appointment, which means that patients don’t have traumatic memories that prevent them from seeking future care.

Unfortunately, dental fears cause far too many people to put off routine dental care until an emergency like an abscess or severe tooth pain requires them to seek help. As a result, those conditions may require more extensive and expensive treatment than they would if they had been addressed earlier. If you fall into that category of patients, consider sedation dentistry as a method for helping you overcome your fears.

Please contact one of our dentists serving Dallas County to learn more about sedation dentistry.