So many patients are fearful of their dentist that they delay dental treatment and avoid asking for help. Today we’re going to explain why and how to get over dental anxiety so that you do not delay your dental procedures or cause yourself undue worry. IV sedation dentistry is one of the options we offer to create a non-threatening environment, to help our patients relax and to enable you to have preventative dental care.
The Causes Of Dental Anxiety
Anxiety or fear of the dentist is a very real phenomenon that stops many patients from seeking much-needed dental treatments. Very often the root can be traced back to a bad experience during childhood: to an irate dentist or anaesthetic that didn’t work and caused an unnecessarily painful dental treatment.
Some patients are generally fearful of a medical or dental environment. Others may mistrust dentists while some patients have a fear of needles or the pain they associate with them.
Certainly going through this period of coronavirus has elicited further dental anxiety for some patients who may feel nervous about returning to the dentist, either for a check up or to resume their treatment plan.
For most patients getting through their dental anxiety requires them to have a positive experience where they can see that they are not under any threat or risk. But, because of their innate fear, they simply find it too stressful.
How We Create A Safe Environment To Combat Dental Anxiety?
At Woonona Dentists. we understand that many patients can’t rationalise their dental fears and anxieties so it’s up to us to create a place where patients feel safe enough to relax and allow us to treat them.
Some of the techniques we use include:
- Giving patients the freedom to leave if they need to. This generally doesn’t happen but the knowledge that they can leave makes a big difference to the way people feel.
- Explaining exactly what to expect, how the procedure will work and what is going to happen next. Very often the fear of not knowing is a scary prospect for anxious patients and so having an expectation can make the experience much more bearable.
- IV sedation dentistry is very popular among patients who are nervous about dental procedures.
How Does IV Sedation Dentistry Work?
If you are a suitable candidate, IV sedation is a viable method of how to get rid of dental anxiety. Administered through an IV tube, sedation dentistry makes use of sedatives that relax you completely. The sedatives ensure that you do not experience any pain or discomfort during dental procedures. They also ensure that the procedure goes by very quickly, and in many cases the patient does not remember much of what happened.
Because it can take some time for the medication to leave your system you will need someone else to drive you home afterwards, but you will start to feel like yourself quite soon after the procedure has ended.
Would you like personalised advice on how to get rid of dental anxiety? Please contact us for an appointment: (02) 4210 9078.
