Discussing: Sedation Dentistry
Randy Alvarez: “So, you’re big on sedation?”
Dr: Rogers: “Oh, huge! My favorite thing to do! So a lot of patients, Randy, are struggling with coming to the dentist because of fear and anxiety. And, because they’re concerned about the amount of time they’re gonna have to spend with me. So, if someone’s got a lot of fear and anxiety about coming to the dentist and getting dental work done, IV sedation is a great way to do it. We can do things comfortably and extremely safely. So we keep patients in a very safe sedative level; very comfortable for the patient, we can get the work done. And, we can do a lot of the work in a single appointment.”
Randy Alvarez: “Like they could be there four or five hours, and to them it feels like five minutes?”
Dr: Rogers: “Oh yeah! Four or five hours seems like two minutes, you know, almost every patient, when they wake up, they’re like, ‘How long has it been?’, and we say, ‘Well, it’s been four hours’, ‘Oh, I thought we just started!’.”
Randy Alvarez: “What about safety with IV sedation?”
Dr: Rogers: “Safety’s big! You know, we have to keep patients safe when they’re sedated. So, we’ve got the training to do it, we’ve got all the safety measures in place to do so.”
Randy Alvarez: “What are you monitoring?”
Dr: Rogers: “We’re monitoring heart rate, blood pressure, heart rhythm. We’re monitoring breathing in and out, we’re monitoring all these things continuously just to make sure things are as safe as possible.”
Randy Alvarez: “Now are you bringing somebody from the outside in to do your sedation or do you do it?”
Dr: Rogers: “I do it myself. So, I’m in charge of the whole thing, which is great because it means I get to be in tune with what’s going on with the patient and make sure they’re at a comfortable level and make sure things are as safe as possible.”
Randy Alvarez: “You give pills as well, is that right? But with IV Sedation, is it true that you could kind of pull them out of it if you wanted to?”
Dr: Rogers: “Yeah, so we do oral sedation, that’s where we do pills, but IV sedation is vastly superior because we have complete control over the level of sedation. So, if someone’s needing a little more sedation, we can do it instantaneously. If they’re ready to come out so that we can start working on things where we might need some cooperation from the patient, we can do that too.”