Sedation Dentistry: Increasing Practicality

Too many Americans are running out of regular dental care, and that's the perfect prescription to allow minor dental problems to become major problems that are much more expensive to repair. Dental anxiety or unusual sensitivity to pain can cause people to miss regular checkups. That is why one of the biggest changes in the world of dentistry is that sedation dentistry is much more widely available. This information is an opportunity for you to understand a little about their history, current approaches, and why it is a very practical and safe consideration for dental patients. How new is sedation dentistry? You may not have heard much about it until the last few decades, but it has been around for a long, long time. One of the sedation techniques still used today dates rancho bernardo dentistry back to the 1840s. It was then that Connecticut dentist Horace Wells first experimented with and introduced the use of nitrous oxide sometimes called laughing gas. And it was actually another dentist (one of Wells's students) who introduced the use of ether as a form of general anesthesia. Since that progressive thought leadership of the 19th century in the field of dentistry and pain management, the range of techniques and medications used has expanded and great strides have been made in the safe administration of dental sedation. In the 21st century, both the world of dentistry and the world of medicine, in general, have an excellent understanding of the risks associated with all types of sedation and anesthesia. Furthermore, dentistry also understands much better how two different problems, anxiety and pain, are so closely related. Dentists are also highly trained in the use of psychological and pharmacological approaches that can be used to manage one or both of the problems. Are there different types of sedation dentistry? In October 2007, the ADA (American Dental Association) adopted guidelines that address three different levels of sedation: minimal, moderate, and deep sedation. (While the document Guidelines for the Use of Sedation and General Anesthesia by Dentists is available on the ADA website, it is written in language more suitable for those in the field of dentistry.) However, what the general public should understand is that these are guidelines, not legal requirements for practicing dentists. In the United States, regulatory responsibility for the practice of dentistry rests with individual states. Some states have recently adopted specific laws governing the practice of sedation dentistry as a service for residents of the state, to provide assurance of safety in the use of this increasingly popular dental service. Individual states are not required to adopt the ADA guidelines; They can define their own levels of sedation, as well as the training, experience, and accreditation process to be used. That is not to say that the ADA is not very influential in the decision-making process of individual states. What type of sedation may be suitable for me? That's an excellent question, but also one for which there is no precise answer unless you are well versed in dentistry. Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that there are different levels of sedation dentistry available, and that the number and names of those levels can vary between states where regulations exist. And the answer may also be a specific dental procedure or procedures that are being performed. However, this basic information can be helpful as you begin to consider sedation dentistry for yourself or a member of your family. - Sedation, as well as general anesthesia, is a pharmacological way of altering your level of awareness of what is happening around you (that is, your level of consciousness). - Your level of consciousness/consciousness does not "descend" by specific levels, it is a continuous scale. (This is why defining specific levels of sedation is, technically speaking, somewhat confusing. The levels are normally tied to a range of consciousness/consciousness, which will have some overlap with the upper and lower level). - Medications used to provide sedation may vary. Also, some are given by mouth, some by inhalation, and some intravenously (into the veins). Sometimes the drugs are used in combination. Both the type of medication and the way it is administered are often factors in how different states define their regulatory statutes and levels of sedation.