I’m Afraid of the Dentist

Comfort Options

To help you have the most comfortable, pleasant dental visit you have ever experienced, we offer the following to put you at ease:

• Caring and understanding staff. There’s no scolding or embarrassment here! You’re our valued client, and we promise to stop, listen to your concerns, and discuss them with you.
• Stereo headphones to reduce noise and distraction. We have a great choice of iPod music, and you are also welcome to bring your own favorites music.
• Digital x-ray sensors (inside the mouth) and digital panoramic x-rays are very comfortable, reducing or eliminating gagging.
• CT Cone Beam #3d scans or pan-oral x-rays are extremely advanced, precise techniques that we use along with enhanced diagnostic information, which, in many cases, enables us to totally eliminate the use of intra-oral x-rays.
• Wand computer anesthesia uses a microprocessor-controlled device to deliver the anesthetic. No more “Civil War era” dental syringes needed! Though we can’t promise “painless,” we can get extremely close with wand delivery and modern topical anesthetics.
• Advanced laser dentistry eliminates decay fast without needles, for many patients. Check out our menu choice of advanced dental lasers. Only about 5% of U.S. dentists currently use lasers for most routine dental fillings – we’re one of them.
• Needle-free anesthesia is one of our recent additions, numbing the gums and providing comfortable dental cleanings or periodontal therapy.
• Nitrous oxide (“laughing gas”) is available to help patients feel they are “somewhere else.”

“The advantage of nitrous oxide is that it wars off fast, acts fast, and the level can be adjusted for the patient. The degree of anxiety relief varies tremendously between individual patients and can be useful for less severe procedures.

• Oral pill sedation is another option, working wonders with many patients. After taking “just a little pill,” many people snore throughout their visit and remember practically nothing! This level of sedation is best for patients with pronounced dental fear, a strong gag reflex, embarrassment concerns, or who want as much work done per visit as possible.  Visit our page on oral pill conscious
• IV (intravenous) sedation uses an IV catheter, enabling sedative medication to be titrated, or adjusted, to the needs of the individual patient. Most patients experience amnesia and do not remember the visit. Sedation can also raise the pain threshold dramatically for “difficult to numb” patients.  Visit our page on IV dental intravenous sedation.

For patients with more advanced dental fears, dental phobia, gagging problems, needle fear, or are medically compromised dental sedation is often the best option.  Visit our page on oral pill conscious sedation or our page on deep IV dental intravenous sedation.