Is Your Child Extra Anxious About Dental Visits? 3 Reasons Taking Them to a Sleep Dentist Is Profound Solution
As much as you want to help your kid maintain good oral health, they will often not cooperate. Due to anxiety, most kids associate even the simplest dental procedures with pain. This leaves the parents torn between skipping the dental visits and forcing their children to see a dentist. However, if you take your child to a sleep dentist, you know you are off the hook because your child will likely change the way they have always perceived dentists and dental procedures. Sleep dentists use some medication to help kids and adult patients relax during routine dental procedures. This means your child will have little or no discomfort or pain during the procedure, and they might not even remember how the dental procedure went because they were asleep. If your child fears dental visits, see why you should take them to a sleep dentist.
The Child Won't Experience the Pain They Expected
Due to anxiety and fear, most kids expect that any dental procedure will hurt. However, a sleep dentist knows what to do to make the experience pain-free and a little enjoyable. They administer anaesthetic injections to prevent pain, especially during tooth removal or any other dental procedure that might inflict some pain. With sleep dentistry, your child will just relax or even fall asleep as the dentist works on their teeth. In fact, the child might wake up not knowing what the procedure was all about. This helps reduce the child's anxiety in a big way so that they won't fear visiting the dentist next time.
The Child Gets Quality Dental Treatment
Even if the dentist knows what they should do to improve your child's dental health, it's sometimes difficult when the child can't cooperate. Most dentists get distracted when the child becomes restless or even when they can't stand a little pain. Thus, the dentist may get tempted to overlook some treatment details that they should have given attention to. However, in sleep dentistry, the child gets better dental treatment because they stay calm. The dentist works on your kid's teeth more effectively and quickly without interruptions or even worry that your child might shout, cry or move around.
Anxiety Will Get a Lifetime Knockout
How you approach dental care or dental visits determines how effectively your child would kill anxiety. Different kids struggle with varying levels of dental anxiety, and the more you introduce them to friendlier dental procedures, the quicker the anxiety melts. If your child had a dental visit or procedure that turned out to be a traumatic experience, they would likely get scared whenever you mention a dentist or dental appointment. However, although your child might associate the trip to a sleep dentist with what they experienced some time back, how the sleep dentist carries out the dental procedure will help them fight the anxiety they have always clung to.
Sleep dentists use different medications to make anxious patients calm, depending on the kind of dental procedure they want to carry out. Some will cause the patients to inhale the laughing gas (nitrous oxide), while others will use medications—these two methods keep the patients relaxed and conscious during the dental procedure. If the dental procedure is somehow complicated, they might administer anaesthesia intravenously so the child doesn't have a memory of the dental procedure.
To learn more, contact a sleep dentist.