Our Dental Services
Sedation Dentistry
Sedation dentistry refers to the use of pharmacological agents to calm and relax a patient prior to and during a dental appointment. The pharmacological agents usually belong to a class of drugs called sedatives, which exert their action by depressing the central nervous system, specifically those areas concerned with conscious awareness.
We believe most people have anxiety or fear to a certain extent when they visit a dentist. As far as that anxiety does not become overwhelming and make you avoid receiving dental treatments, you are probably experiencing what most people do. The anxiety or fear can be due to a number of different reasons for different people. Past bad experiences with your previous dentists, fear of pain inflicted on you, anxious about what is unknown to you, scary stories from friends or family members about dental experiences, negative image of dentists causing pain to their patients created in the media, and so on and so forth. All or part of these may be your reasons for your unfound fears whenever you think of going to visit your dentist. A good dentist should make the patients (at least most of them) feel at ease. If your dentist makes you feel very intimidated or very nervous, you have to find out it is his/her problem or yours. If it is his/hers, then switch to someone that you can build a good rapport with. If it is your problem, you should let your dentist know right in the beginning of the appointment, or even better before the appointment. There are a number of ways that dentists can help their patients to reduce their anxiety or nervousness about dental visits. I will discuss a few common ones.