At Today’s Dentistry, we aim to give you all the choices we possibly can. So when it comes to your teeth, you can decide which dental treatments you want and how you want to have them.
Extending this service, we’re pleased to now offer you the possibility of having your dental treatments performed at our specialised sedation clinic.
Located on Queen Street in the Brisbane CBD, our clinic functions as a conventional dental practice but it also has a surgery that’s set up with all the monitoring equipment we need to do dental procedures via sedation and general anaesthetic.
“Our sedation room at the clinic looks and feels a little like a surgery with the hospital-grade facilities we need – a general anaesthetic machine, ventilator, ECG machine and all the other gadgets the anaethetist uses to monitor your sedation or anaesthesia,” explains Dr David Kerr, who can be your treating dentist at our Queen Street clinic.
Here we offer these sedation and anaesthetic options:
Nitrous oxide or ‘laughing gas’
- For people who are a bit nervous
- Simply breathe in this gas
- Can be given by your dentist in the chair
- You’ll quickly feel deeply relaxed or ‘happy drunk’
- You’ll still be awake and able to respond to your dentist
Intravenous (IV) sedation
- Good if you need a deeper relaxant
- Medication is administered into your bloodstream by an anaesthetist
- You’ll feel ‘out of it’
- You’re not fully unconscious but in the ‘twilight’ zone!
- Probably won’t remember what happened
General anaesthetic
- For patients with severe fear who want to be ‘put to sleep’
- A long-acting anaesthetic is injected into your arm by a qualified anaesthetist
- Unconscious during treatment and unaware of anything that went on
- Due to possible risks, it can only be done in a private hospital or specialist clinic with the necessary medical staff, equipment and facilities
- Allows a dentist complete control in more difficult cases, as a patient isn’t able to move around
“The majority of teeth surgery, for example a complex wisdom tooth extraction, is done under general anaesthetic (GA) during day surgery,” says Dr Kerr. “As GA is a reasonably invasive procedure and can be costly, often people choose to have several dental treatments done at the same time.”
Looking for a sedation dentist?
We find that highly anxious patients have almost always decided they want to be ‘put to sleep’ for their dental procedure before they’ve even seen us. As long as you’re informed and know the consequences of your decision, that’s OK.
“Our role isn’t to talk you into having sedation or general anaesthetic,” says Dr Kerr. “We’ll give you all your options and have a discussion of what’s going to happen.”
If you’re interested in finding out more about our sedation clinic, call Today’s Dentistry on 07 3263 2677 or book your appointment online to meet our dentists.
