Procedures

General anesthesia/sedation

Disadvantages & risks

General anesthesia and sedation techniques:

• Depress (or, in the case of general anesthesia, eliminate) spontaneous breathing, and as such can present a life threat in cases of over-sedation.
• Impair your ability to operate machinery, drive a vehicle, or perform other motor functions safely while under the influence of the medication. You may not be fully aware of your impaired abilities, and should be supervised until motor function is normal. Your doctor can help you determine how long the period of sedation should last for the medication you are taking.
• Have a potentially life-threatening additive effect to other central nervous system depressants you may be taking, including narcotic pain relievers, insomnia medications, and alcohol.
• Add to the overall cost of an already expensive procedure.
• May not be necessary to allow safe and effective treatment of fearful patients. Sometimes, just talking through a patient's fears and establishing a basis for trust, can go a long ways toward making a patient comfortable.

General anesthsia and sedative medications may have specific risks which are currently beyond the scope of ToothIQ to describe. Your doctor will be able to provide you with a detailed information sheet describing any medication they prescribe. Be sure you understand all of the risks and benefits of the medication you will be taking.

Oral sedatives are less desirable than intravenous sedation for several reasons, including:

• It is difficult to predict how a person will respond to an oral sedative medication, and the exact dose that will provide a safe and effective sedation is uncertain.
• Oral sedatives cannot be "titrated" (administered a little at a time until just the right dose is reached).
• Patients who are under-sedated at the time of the appointment may need to be rescheduled on another day, and the oral dose adjusted. This "trial and error" approach wastes valuable time for everyone involved.
• There is no way to be sure how much of the drug a patient took, unless it is administered in-office. This may not be practical for the patient or the provider.
• Oral sedatives given to reduce the anxiety of a procedure may combine with pain relievers given to reduce post-operative pain, to produce a deadly amount of central nervous system and respiratory depression.