Sedation options for comfortable dental treatment

Dr. Nikki Green: We offer a couple different types of sedation in our office. The most popular, most common form of sedation that we use every day in our practice is something called conscious sedation.
So, we use a medication called Halcion, generic name triazolam, where the patient can take a couple of those pills before they come in first thing in the morning. I always like to say that by the time they get here, they feel like they had a couple of margaritas, which is a great way to go to the dentist. Really, by the time we get them on a chair and we start our procedure, they're often on asleep.
The benefit of that to me is it is a conscious sedation so they can let us know if they're uncomfortable, if they need to go to the restroom if they just need a break. But for the most part they're sleeping on and off throughout the procedure, really making that two or three hours that they're in the chair fly by.
To me, there's two main benefits to sedation in a dental chair. The first is for the busy patient. Someone who maybe has neglected their teeth for a few years, they have a maybe couple of years worth of dentistry to catch up on, and a typical scenario where there's no sedation that might take three or four appointments over a period of two or three months. Whereas with sedation dentistry, you come in for one appointment. You can have all of your dentistry done at once and then the dentistry is behind you. You don't have to have multiple appointments to accomplish even a simple treatment plan.
The bigger benefit for me is the anxious patients. Many people put off dental care because they're worried. They're worried about the fear, or the fear of pain, the fear of being in a dental chair, some people are really claustrophobic in the dental chair. Whereas conscious sedation, you can really eliminate all of that so we can accomplish anything from a simple treatment plan to a full mouth rehabilitation or implant surgery, all while the patient is sleeping.
So that's for me the benefit of conscious sedation. You can come in, you can sleep through the dental procedure, wake up with a new smile, and have very little memory of how that smile was created.
-----
Dr. Green discusses the different types of sedation we offer to help relieve patients of their dental anxiety. The sedation we offer helps to relax the patient so that we can perform their dental work in a timely manner that is comfortable and convenient for them.