Sleep Dentistry – The Ultimate Solution to Dental Anxiety

Find yourself pushing off your dental appointments for fear of a dental treatment? You’re not alone. Dental anxiety or phobia is common among a lot of patients who choose to forge necessary treatments, all to avoid visiting a dental clinic.

But while dental treatments are dauting if you suffer from anxiety, what helps is choosing sedation or sleep dentistry at a trusted dental clinic.

Sedative levels for sleep dentistry in Melbourne can be either of the following:

• Mild sedation, where the patient is relaxed, awake and aware of what’s happening, and can interact with the dentist.
• Moderation sedation, also called conscious sedation, where the patient is awake and is able to respond to requests and react to touch.
• Deep sedation is where the patient is unconscious but can be woken up when needed. Under this sedation, patients respond to repeated or painful stimuli but might need support to breathe.
• Dissociative sedation is where the patient is awake in a trance-like state but cannot feel the pain or retain the memory of the event. However, one is able to react or respond to requests, follow commands, and breathe on their own.

The Different Types of Sleep Dentistry to Address Dental Anxiety

Scared of visiting the dentist due to your phobia? Or, perhaps, of the treatment equipment that causes your anxiety to spike? Dentists make your necessary dental procedures easier by providing treatments under sedation. Using one of the many types of sedations to put you to sleep, dentists make sure you are not anxious and do not hurt yourself during the treatment.

Here are some of the common types of sedation offered by dentists in Melbourne:

General anaesthesia

This is the highest level of sedation carried out during a dental treatment. This sedation treatment becomes necessary in cases where a patient’s anxiety for a treatment cannot be managed through pharmacological prescriptions. Under the influence of general anaesthesia, patients are completely unconscious throughout and may need someone to drive them home after.

General anaesthesia is recommended for patients with extreme phobia, intellectual disabilities, or medical conditions causing severe anxiety.

Happy gas

Happy gas or nitrous oxide is a type of sedation that is administered through a nosepiece or mask to help you relax within minutes. Dentists make sure to control the level of sedation and flush it out following your procedure using pure oxygen. One can drive themselves home after a nitrous oxide sedation procedure.

IV sedatives

IV sedations or intravenous sedations are administered directly to your bloodstream, and are generally prescribed for patients undergoing treatments of long durations or for individual with extreme anxiety. During a treatment under IV sedation, you heart rate, oxygen levels, and blood pressure are constantly monitored.

Depending on your treatment, health concerns, and circumstances, your dentist will prescribe the right sedation after a thorough assessment and consultation.

Want to know more about sedation dentistry or the sleep dentistry cost in Melbourne? Reach out to our dentists at CLDC for a consultation.