If you feel anxious about oral surgery, millions of people of all ages also have dental anxiety, and our caring team can ease your worries. At The Ohio Center for Oral, Facial & Implant Surgery, our entire team strives to deliver kindhearted care at our five-star surgery practice.
We encourage you to discuss your apprehensions and anxieties during your first visit. Our team will discuss mild to deep dental anesthesia in Pickerington, Columbus, and Westerville, OH, and how sedation anesthesia near you can deliver a more relaxing dental experience than you ever imagined possible!
Sedation dentistry enables receiving worry-free and relaxing jaw surgery, full-mouth dental implants, and other complex surgical procedures. We’ll help you choose the type of dental anesthesia based on the nature of your procedure and level of apprehension. Our oral and maxillofacial surgeon, Dr. Manraj Bath, will explain everything you need to know about each option, the benefits, risks, and precautions.
Sedation dentistry makes you less aware of time or sensations, so treatment feels more relaxing and manageable. If you struggle with dental anxiety, dental anesthesia from our skilled and caring team can be the key to maintaining a healthy smile without stress.
A local anesthetic (e.g., lidocaine) is administered with a needle in the area where the surgery is to be performed. Local anesthesia numbs the area for pain relief, but doesn’t provide any sedative benefits, so it’s typically used in conjunction with other dental anesthesia methods for oral surgery. Numbness can linger for a few hours after receiving local anesthesia, so you need to be careful and avoid chewing and eating hot foods or beverages to prevent lip or tongue injuries.
Also known as laughing gas, nitrous oxide is a sweet-smelling, non-irritating, colorless gas combined with 50-70% oxygen that’s administered through a small nose mask. The relaxing effects start almost immediately and will make you feel giddy or euphoric, with any anxiety fading away.
Our team can control or reverse this mild type of sedation dentistry at any point during your procedure. Breathing pure oxygen quickly flushes any trace amounts of nitrous oxide from your system, so you can drive yourself home or back to work.
With nitrous oxide, the level of sedation can be adjusted at any time to increase or decrease it, ensuring your comfort. Nitrous oxide is safe, effective at managing a strong gag reflex, and doesn’t result in side effects to your heart, lungs, or cognition.
While it can take a few minutes for a local anesthetic to numb the treatment area, nitrous oxide rapidly reaches the brain within 20 seconds, delivering calming effects in 2–5 minutes.
During IV sedation in Pickerington, Columbus, and Westerville, OH, a thin needle attached to an intravenous tube is placed in a vein in your arm or hand. With IV sedation, a constant “drip” is maintained via the IV tube, with as little sedative medication as possible. Although you’ll be deeply relaxed and may nod off, our team can awaken you if we need to communicate.
Your vital signs are closely monitored, and an antidote can be administered to reverse the effects of the sedative medication at any time during your procedure. Due to lingering drowsiness and diminished reflexes that typically last about 12 hours, somebody will need to drive you home.
Our team will provide presurgical and postsurgical guidelines that are crucial to follow to help ensure your safety and a complication-free recovery. Local anesthesia is used to numb the site, while medications are administered through an IV line. You’ll fall asleep and be completely unaware of the procedure being performed.
Medications most commonly used are Fentanyl (opiate), Versed (benzodiazepine), Ketamine, and Diprivan. Supplemental oxygen is delivered through a nasal breathing apparatus, and your vital signs are closely monitored throughout surgery and recovery.
If you’re undergoing an extensive procedure, such as jaw reconstruction, facial trauma surgery, or TMJ surgery, hospitalization is required. This is also indicated for patients with medical conditions, such as heart disease or lung disease, who require general anesthesia.
While Dr. Bath performs your surgery, a board-certified anesthesiologist administers the anesthesia. As with in-office IV sedation and general anesthesia, all your vital signs are closely monitored, but the difference is that you’ll likely spend a few days in the hospital, depending on your procedure.
Dr. Bath is licensed to administer general anesthesia, which means he completed at least 3 months of hospital-based anesthesia training.
He also underwent an in-office evaluation by a state dental board-appointed examiner who observed the administration of general anesthesia to a patient during an actual procedure. In addition, the examiner inspected all monitoring devices and emergency equipment and tested Dr. Bath and our surgical staff on anesthesia-related emergencies.
After the examiner reported successful completion of the evaluation process, the state dental board issued Dr. Bath a license to perform general anesthesia. To maintain our general anesthesia license at The Ohio Center for Oral, Facial & Implant Surgery, Dr. Bath completes the required continuing education units in anesthesia.
We carefully review your medical history and tailor sedation anesthesia near you in Pickerington, Columbus, and Westerville, OH, to your needs, ensuring a controlled and predictable experience. Dr. Bath underwent advanced anesthesia training and must complete continuing education to maintain licensing. Modern anesthesia techniques and monitoring technology make all types of anesthesia safer than ever, even for complex procedures or severe dental anxiety.
Minimal sedation, such as nitrous oxide, relieves anxiety, strong gas reflexes, and awareness of your procedure. Moderate sedation depresses consciousness; thus, it is called twilight sedation, a state similar to excessive sleepiness, yet not fully unconscious.
The benzodiazepines administered during IV sedation induce short-term amnesia, so many patients assume they were completely asleep when that wasn’t the case. With general anesthesia, there’s a complete loss of consciousness, which means you won’t feel, hear, or remember anything.
Some procedures require deeper anesthesia for safety and efficiency, while others can be comfortably completed with lighter sedation. As a fully licensed anesthesia provider, Dr. Bath offers a full spectrum of options and never follows a one-size-fits-all approach.
During a thorough evaluation, Dr. Bath will discuss your concerns and then customize anesthesia to specifically address your needs. This includes the procedure you’re undergoing, anxiety level, medical history, and personal comfort preferences.
The effects of nitrous oxide subside within 5 minutes of breathing in pure oxygen, with no lingering problems. IV sedation effects can last an entire day with lingering grogginess or fatigue, with normal cognition and alertness typically returning within 12 hours.
You’re completely unconscious with general anesthesia, so recovery can take longer and drowsiness can persist for a full 24 hours. Temporary side effects like nausea or fatigue may also occur with general anesthesia. Our team will provide specific recovery guidelines based on the type of sedation you received.
If you’re only receiving nitrous oxide and local anesthesia at The Ohio Center for Oral, Facial & Implant Surgery, no special preparations are required. If you’re undergoing surgery with IV sedation or general anesthesia, our team will provide detailed preoperative guidelines to help prevent serious complications.
For IV sedation and general anesthesia, the standard fasting guideline is to not eat any solid foods or liquids for at least 8 hours before your procedure to prevent aspiration. But unless instructed otherwise, it’s safe to continue taking your regular medications with a small sip of water.
© All rights reserved | Privacy Policy
