Here at Vancity Dental, we know some people find the idea of dental appointments a little scary. Dental fears and phobias are very common. Modern dentistry should never be painful or frightening and everyone here works hard to help put nervous patients at ease, but sometimes this might not be quite enough. If it has been a while since you saw a dentist, if you need complex or lengthy treatment to restore dental health, conscious sedation will help make your experience much more pleasant and easy to cope with. Conscious sedation allows us to complete more treatment, if needed, in a single appointment so we can comfortably restore your smile and your dental health.
What is Conscious Sedation?
Conscious sedation uses sedatives to help you to feel deeply relaxed in the dental chair but you will remain conscious right throughout treatment. We can adjust the level of sedation provided and the sedative will be given orally.
Conscious sedation uses sedatives to help you to feel deeply relaxed in the dental chair but you will remain conscious right throughout treatment.
Oral Sedation
Oral sedation is given as a pill about an hour before your appointment. This will make you feel drowsy but you will still be awake and we can adjust the dosage to provide minimal or more moderate sedation. With minimal sedation, you will remain awake but will feel very relaxed. With moderate sedation, you will feel deeply relaxed and may even fall asleep, although we will be able to easily awaken you. You may not remember much if anything about your treatment.
How Safe is Conscious Sedation?
We take every precaution to keep you safe and screen every patient very carefully to ensure this treatment is safe and appropriate before recommending conscious sedation.
Your dental team will continually monitor you during your appointment and we will keep you with us for a while once treatment is completed, just to make sure you don’t have any unwanted side-effects before we send you home. You will need someone with you to take you home.
If you would like to know more about conscious sedation and how it could help you then please talk to your friendly Vancouver dentists at Vancity Dental.