Is It Dangerous?

All professionals in their interactions/interviews with patients/clients, have to prepare for "The Question". The Question is a question that when answered correctly, removes barriers to your services. In general dentistry, it's "How much will it cost?"; in endodontics, it&#...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inOral Health Vol. 101; no. 2; p. 3
Main Author Nkansah, Peter J
Format Trade Publication Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Montréal Newcom Media Inc 01.02.2011
Subjects
Anesthesia
Dentistry
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Summary:All professionals in their interactions/interviews with patients/clients, have to prepare for "The Question". The Question is a question that when answered correctly, removes barriers to your services. In general dentistry, it's "How much will it cost?"; in endodontics, it's "How much will it hurt?"; in teaching, it's "Will this be on the test?"; and so on. In dental anaesthesia, the question from patients and other dentists is "Is it dangerous?" That's a fair and intuitive question; my answer is "no". Let me explain why via analogy. Dental anaesthesia is a needed and undersupplied treatment modality. The existence of dental anxiety and dental phobia in the population is easily demonstrated in the scientific literature. I recently did an Ovid Medline inquiry on the topic and turned up no less than 133 articles (in English) over the last 14 years. For a variety of reasons, a significant portion of our population is not able to receive dental care while awake. And if they cant have "sleep dentistry", then they won't have dentistry at all. Sedation/anaesthesia for dentistry is safe, but not perfectly safe, even when done correctly. Actually, the same is true about dentistry in general (e.g. antibiotic allergies, local anaesthetic toxicity, etc.).
ISSN:0030-4204