Dr David Howard - Holistic Dentistry
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Fear of dentistry creates problems:
People do not treat little problems early but when they are advanced (and therefore expensive).
People do not attend for scaling and cleaning teeth. This can create bad breath and gum disease.
People have a bad time at any appointment
Dentists and their staff get stressed dealing with new patients
For anxiety we have nitrous oxide (laughing gas) but for serious cases we use Hypnovel. This is a short acting 'valium type' drug. It does not 'knock you out'. It gives one a state of emotional neutrality and an amnesia of varying degrees that lasts for 4-6 hours.
This can be advantageous in several ways. The amnesia means long appointments can be carried out. It is not unusual for us to do 8 -10 fillings in one go (and often more) as it makes no difference to the sedated patient. In fact often we use sedation on non-nervous patients so that they can do all their work in one or 2 appointments rather than 6 or 7 shorter ones. It is just practical for many time poor people.
Hypnovel given intramuscularly is very economical compared with intravenous sedation. It is usually less than a quarter of the cost. This enables it to be cost effective even for minor but very desirable procedures like regular scaling.