Dentistry While You Sleep
DR. MARK SWEENEY: Our final level of dealing with dental phobic patients is the dental anesthesiologist. We’re blessed in Austin to have two of them that will come to the office. Both of them are dentist and licensed dental anesthesiologists. So they’re able to utilize IV sedation just like the oral surgeons would do if they were taking wisdom teeth out and both of them are also able to take it a level beyond that if need be which is usually not necessary but if it needs to be done, they’re both capable of taking you to the general anesthetic level so that you’re completely comfortable and completely unaware of what’s happening in the environment around you. We take this very seriously. I don’t leave the room when we’re doing these type of procedures. We schedule enough time that I’m able to sit with the patient during that entire visit until we get all the dentistry accomplished.
We’ve been able to take care of patients who were so phobic they couldn’t even bring themselves to come in the front door the first couple of times they made appointments. And we’ve been able to utilize this technology and this approach to get all of their dentistry done in less than a half day appointment.