Wednesday, August 25th, 2010
A great number of people simply do not go to the dentist because they are afraid. It may be because they had a bad experience when they where a child and some people have no idea why they are afraid. Whatever the reason, we have seen MANY individuals wait until their teeth were almost killing them because of infections before they would come to the dentist.
In the old days we used to send patients to the hospital and give them general anesthesia to do anything. Now we have the capabilities to give general anesthesia in the luxury of our offices.
When I started getting into more comprehensive type dentistry, we needed to find a way to sedate those individuals who had a fear of dentistry to get them through the procedures, because the procedures they needed done could be perceived as “frightening”, not necessarily painful, but frightening. Sedation provides a solution for eliminating that fear.
Oral Sedation
Oral sedation is very popular in dentistry right now but I use it in a limited manner because it is not as predictable or as safe. You can’t predict how it is going to be absorbed or how it is going to affect one person versus another. and you can’t just keep giving them more medications one after another because it takes 30 minutes to an hour for that medication to be taken up in the stomach and to get in the bloodstream. So you could run the risk of over sedation if pills are given to close together.
IV Sedation
The IV is always much safer because once the patient has receive the medication through the IV, within 60 to 90 seconds you know exactly how it is going to affect that person and then you can titrate it (control concentration) so that you get the proper sedation without over sedation, making this sedation method totally safe.
If someone has been avoiding the dentist because of fear, IV sedation is an option because it allows us to do a lot of dentistry in 1 or 2 appointments. and get them back to good health. Fear of the dentist is based upon many things. One of them is lack of trust – so a patient has to come in and learn how they are going to react with that particular dentist to develop trust. We work with our patients on developing trust, especially those who are fearful because that alleviates a good portion of their fear- if they know they are working with someone who cares about them. You can’t get that kind of care in a clinical situation…where there are many patients waiting for that dental chair. For this reason we provide personalized, private, one-patient-at-a-time dental care.
Tags: adult, aesthetic, AR, Arkansas, attention, Bella Vista, Bentonville, centerton, corporate, cosmetic, dentist, dentistry, dentists, Esthetic, Farmington, Fayetteville, fear, fear of, fix my teeth, healthy smile, implant dentistry, implantology, IV, jane, Joplin, lowell, mo, neosho, nicer smile, northwest ar, NWA, oral, oral health, pain, painful, personalized, Pinnacle, pinnacle hills, pinnacle point, private, restorative, Rogers, scared, scared of, sedation, Sleep dentistry, solution, solutions, Springdale
Posted in Cosmetic Dentistry, Pain relief, Restorative Dentistry, sedation | No Comments »
Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
We have become passionate about learning more about dentures over the past several years. Early in our dental practice we saw a new patient who was in her thirties and had dentures since she was sixteen years old. She had absolutely no bone left and could not wear her dentures. Back then we did everything that was known at the time to help her and this sent us on a quest as life-long students in dentistry. In today’s dentistry we have better answers, but at the time she was still unable to chew with her dentures. Our newest technology gives us options such as bone grafting, implants, and other stabilization. However, if a patient loses their teeth and simply puts plastic over the gums, they are going to be orally handicapped. For this reason, we do the best restoration that we can that is functional and aesthetic. This approach makes the patient look like they should look if they had their original teeth. That was a problem for most dentures in the past because, as the lower jaw shrinks, the neutral zone between the tongue and lip moves back. To keep your denture from having this constant movement of being pushed back and up, you couldn’t support that lower lip like you normally would. That’s why so many people with dentures look older-because they are not supporting the lips plus they wear them way to long and the jaw is over closed. As the jaw is over closed then you get the “Andy Gump” look where the chin almost meets the nose.
One of the things we do with our dentures is to work with our patients so that they can tolerate having their bite over to where it should be. And now, as a standard of care, someone who is missing a lot of bone in the lower jaw, if possible, should have implants. If you can stabilize the denture and support the lip where it should be, it takes years off the patient’s face.
Tags: Bella Vista, Bentonville, cold sensitivity, dental specialist, dentist, dentures, Farmington, Fayetteville, heat sensitivity, implants, irritation, Joplin, lowell, mouth, mouth pain, neosho, Northwest Arkansas, NWA, Pain relief, pain when chewing, personalized, quality, real looking dentures, Rogers, root canal, securing dentures, solid dentures, solutions, specialist, Springdale, stabilization, stabilize, stable, teeth, tooth, tooth pain, tooth sensitivity, treatment, trouble chewing
Posted in Cosmetic Dentistry, Restorative Dentistry | No Comments »
