IV SEDATION CANDIDATES
IS IV SEDATION FOR YOU?
Which Patient Are You?
I have Dental Anxiety.
I have dental anxiety, enough that I have avoided dental care, and now it can’t wait.
Even with extreme dental anxiety, the IV sedation we offer will put you in a deep state of sleep that will allow us to complete needed dental work that your anxiety has been preventing you from getting. We have also found that the majority of patients that have severe dental anxiety that complete their dental work under IV sedation are able to resume normal dental cleanings and exams without the use of IV sedation at successive appointments.
Local Anesthesia doesn’t work for me.
I can’t get numb or stay numb and it prevents me from getting dental work done.
Some of the medications used during IV sedation prevent pain signals from reaching the brain, or being processed by the brain. This allows dental work to be completed even if total numbness is not achievable. In some cases, a small number of fillings can be completed without local anesthetic.
I have a bad gag reflex.
I have a bad gag reflex which prevents me from getting dental work done.
Midazolam and propofol, both medications we use routinely, suppress or temporarily eliminate your gag reflex. By suppressing your gag reflex, completing dental work becomes much safer.
I have special needs.
I am a special needs patient that has been unable to complete dental work in an office.
The waitlist for hospital-based dentistry at the University of Iowa is well over a year. Many of the dental issues we have seen need to be treated within days or weeks. We are able to complete an exam, cleaning, imaging and all needed work on our healthy special needs patients that may not have an option of seeing a dentist outside an operating room due to poor patient cooperation. A normal multi-appointment pre-op and OR visit to complete work is not needed, all work can be completed in one long appointment. We are able to successfully treat autistic patients and patients with Down syndrome in our office, thereby bypassing the need for hospital-based dentistry. As with all sedation patients, a “meet and greet” pre-op appointment is always required though as well as a thorough review of your health history.
I have extensive dental needs.
I have extensive dental needs and want it completed in one or two appointments.
Why go back and forth to the dentist several times, each time needing to be numbed, or needing to have a crown cemented. Instead of three or more 2-3 hour appointments, by putting you into a deep sleep, we can complete everything in one long appointment including root canals as well as complete fabrication and cementation of a crown. To you it will only have felt like a few minutes have passed.
Customized IV sedation
You are unique, your sedation should be too.
Every patient we see is unique and not all patients all respond the same way to the various medications we use for IV sedation. Because our CRNAs are experts in anesthesia, airway management and emergencies, the array of medications that can be safely used in our office far surpasses any provider doing their own anesthesia and general dentistry.
Our CRNAs literally customize your sedation experience to you. It is known as balanced anesthesia, and it provides the best possible IV sedation for your appointment that you could possibly have. It is also the safest way to provide anesthesia for office-based IV sedation.
Because appointment times for general dentistry under IV sedation typically are between 60-120 minutes, we use a drug infusion pump that delivers a constant amount of medications during the entire duration of the appointment. This is the exact opposite of what you might find in oral surgery office or at another general dentist office that does their own sedation and work (a 1 provider model).
What makes Iowa Sedation Dentistry the best choice for your IV sedation dentistry needs?
Simple, Safe, and Effective Every Time!
Safety is our unyielding goal. Like an operating room in a hospital, the jobs of anesthesia and operating doctor are separate. With appointments that are over 30 minutes this allows the anesthesia provider to rapidly adjust levels of sedation depending on the work that is being completed at different points of the appointment. This also allows the dentist to efficiently complete dental procedures without worry as to the sedation state of the patient. Practicing this way allows the dentist to focus 100% on providing high quality dentistry at more rapid pace than what could be done if the dentist was the anesthesia provider at the same time. This substantially decreases appointment and sedation time for the patient. This also means the patient stays asleep the whole time without bouncing in and out of sedation between hand doses of medications.
type of iv sedation we provide
Because IV sedation is a continuum, the type of IV sedation we provide in our office for general dentistry is considered IV deep sedation / general anesthesia. The medications we use to achieve this are also classified by the state of Iowa as deep sedation / general anesthesia medications and CANNOT be used for moderate IV sedation. Deep sedation/general anesthesia is considered one type of sedation in dentistry because both can share some characteristics of the other.
what to expect
At Iowa Sedation Dentistry, when we provide deep sedation/general anesthesia, breathing and airway remain completely intact during the entire appointment as well as cardiovascular function. We do not use inhaled anesthetic, have a machine breath for you, nor to we intubate you. To prevent aspiration (fluid or debris entering lungs); we do place a device in the back of your mouth after you fall sleep that does continuous suction for the entire duration of the appointment as well as physically prevent anything from entering your airway. This makes the whole process extremely safe for the level of sedation we are providing.