Is Sedation Dentistry Safely Applicable For Your Kid?

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Is Sedation Dentistry Safely Applicable For Your Kid?

By Emmy Dental Of Cypress

Be careful while your child is being sedated

If you are one among the scores of patients who suffer from the typical dental fear while walking inside the dental office, you must essentially know all about sedation dentistry. In this post, we will be concerned with sedation dentistry applied to children for carrying out their dental procedures. In simple terms, sedation is the technique that would help your child relax, when you are seated in front of your children’s dentist .

Whether in case of adults or children, sedation can be administered to the patients in different levels, from mild to deep sedation or even to the extent of a general anesthesia!

Let us have a notion about the various degrees of sedation that are commonly used by the children’s dentist.

 

  • Inhaled Sedation: A mask is worn by the patient for this and he or she is made to inhale nitrous oxide or “laughing gas” combined with oxygen. The amount inhaled is well monitored by your child’s dentist and he adjusts the dose as required. This sedation wears off easily and your kid can normally walk back home after the procedure is done.
  • Oral Sedation: A pill, usually from the Valium family is given to the child, which makes him or her feel drowsy. It is often combined with the laughing gas and applied to the patient too.
  • Intravenous Sedation: Sedatives are directly injected into the veins of the child. This sedation is slightly deeper and your baby would require some time after the dentist’s job is done, in order to recover from his/her state of trance. Only then would he be able to walk back home!
  • General Anesthesia: This method makes the patient completely unconscious. Complex dental procedures which usually take a longer duration calls for a general anesthesia only. Otherwise it is not a very common tool that is used by dentists in general.

So how are children exposed to different levels of sedation?

Children remain at a greater risk of going down deeper into a sedation, once applied. Past medical history has it that unintended level of sedation has put a number of innocent lives into danger. In fact, statistics reveal that in the last three decades, a many as 44 children, aged between 2 to 5 years of age, succumbed to inappropriate levels of sedation administered through a general anesthesia.

So, you need to be extra conscious, when your baby needs to be taken to the pediatric dentist. There are certain things a parent should keep in knowledge before a kid undergoes any dental intervention.

 

  • Children with enlarged tonsils are more susceptible to airway obstruction than adults. The comparatively smaller airway (in children below 6 years of age) remain at greater chances of being blocked easily.
  • Oxygen reserve in a small child’s body is much less than that of an older child (one who is aged above 12). Hence, in case of emergencies, a kid’s body is not equipped to cope up with a small crisis of oxygen within the body and thus fall a prey to fatal outcomes.
  • One needs to be extra attentive with overweight and obese children. The sedative drugs do not get metabolized easily and remains stored in the fat cells! These children take a longer time to recover from their sedation.

Sedation is not something that your child’s dentist would easily recommend. A kid’s behavior, state of mind, strength of nerve etc.will be taken into account before your pediatric dentist suggests an anesthesia for him or her. In order to ensure precision in this regard, a parent needs to meticulously choose a children’s dentist at Cypress TX and zero in on the best kids dentistry within the nearby locality.