Sedation Dentistry

Sedation is in short putting people in a sleepy state, and that can range anywhere from what we call anxiolysis where somebody is just mildly sedated. They can talk to you, they can function, they can do all the things there, but their brain is just telling them that it's relax time. And it can go anywhere, stretch all the way to the other spectrum of general anesthesia, which is done in, like, a hospital setting where you have a breathing machine. So that's not what we do in a dental office. Mostly, in a dental office, we're talking about anywhere from anxiolysis to conscious or deep sedation. Sedation, anesthesia in the dental office setting is used for, one, the fearful patient. And it's not only fear, we have some patients that gag very easy. I mean, you touch their lips, they start to gag. So those patients are candidate for sedation. If somebody, I mean, haven't been to the dental office because they're afraid, they're candidate for sedation. And sometimes we have some extensive treatment that needs to be done, including some bone grafting. In those patients, it's only fair for the patients that it's done under sedation. Benefits is you can get all your treatment done at the same time, and you wake up to a new smile. And includes whether it's extraction, whether it's implant placement. And it takes away the fear factor that the patient doesn't have to worry much about what's going on. In this office, FCI Dental Care, we provide conscious sedation, and we use some pills that we will give patients. We will give them something that they will take, like, the night before so they're not thinking about the dental treatment, that they'll get a good restful sleep. And then once they come in the office, we titrate them . . . and then while we're doing the treatment.