Dental Anxiety

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Digital x-ray sensors (inside the mouth) and digital panoramic x-rays are very comfortable, reducing or eliminating gagging.
4. Wand electronic anesthesia that uses a microprocessor controlled device to deliver the anesthetic.  No more “Civil War” era dental syringe!  Along with better topical anesthetics, “painless” can’ t be promised-but we are dramatically closer.
5. Advances in anesthetic solutions make numbing more comfortable and much more effective than the old fashioned Novacaine!
6. Nitrous oxide (laughing gas) helps many patients “feel they are somewhere else.”Advanced laser dentistry provides fast elimination of decay without needles for many patients!
7. Ever have a painful dental cleaning?  We now offer needle-free anesthesia to numb the gums for comfortable dental cleaning and periodontal therapy!
8. Oral sedation works wonders with many patients.  Often “just a little pill” and many people actually snore though the visit and remember almost nothing!  Sedation is appropriate for patients with pronounced dental fear, extreme gagging, embarrassment concerns, or desire to have their dental treatments done in the minimal number of visits.
9. I.V. (intravenous) sedation uses an I.V. catheter to deliver the sedative medication so that the sedative can be titrated, or adjusted, to the needs of the individual patient.  Most patients experience amnesia of the visit.  Sedation can also dramatically raise the pain threshold for those “difficult to numb” patients. Very few dentists (less than 2%) are licensed for sedation in the State of Illinois due to stringent requirements.  Dentists who promise sedation without the option of full IV sedation may not be able to deliver the level of amnesia and comfort that we find many patients are seeking.  Many times we have a patient start with the oral pill sedation, and if they are not sufficiently comfortable switch to the IV sedation.