Dr. Mustapha Hotait on the comfort options for patients
When it comes to dental implants, the process itself is very simple. There are certain patients that don’t like the dentist, don’t like to hear the drills, don’t like to see the needles, don’t want to see or kind of feel anything. And for those patients, sedation is a great option because it allows them to kind of get through the process with very little, if any, anxiety and any pain or discomfort.
So most of the patients that we do these treatments on come in asking for sedation. We’re not the one, you know, telling them, hey, let’s put you to sleep or let’s sedate you. They’re actually coming in asking for that.
And that’s great options for any patients that’s undergoing any type of implant procedure. We have a variety of options when it comes to making our patients kind of feel comfortable and reducing their anxiety. Some patients are good candidates for simply laughing gas or nitrous gas, okay? Some patients are good candidates for oral sedation, where we give them a little pill to help them relax and we do the treatment.
Other patients are good candidates for IV sedation or what we call twilight sedation. Those patients, you know, they come in and they’re fully asleep when we do the procedure. All they know is we put the IV in and then we’re taking the IV out.
They don’t know what happens in between. So we kind of have that range depending on what the patient’s needs are.