Quote:
Originally Posted by stomachmonkey
You seem to have knowledge about this so can you tell us (generally) if sedation is SOP for someone that young as a matter of course or was it recommended due to multiple root canals being performed simultaneously or a combo of both?
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In general almost any dental procedure can be done under local anesthesia alone. Sedation is added to manage anxiety and general "freak out" that is all psychological. While many kids can undergo dental procedures with local alone or local + Nitrous oxide, some, for various reasons (history of abuse, bad prior experiences, etc) cannot tolerate this. For these kids some form of sedation is needed.
I am not a pediatric dentist but I do a lot of gum grafts on kids age 7-10, referred to me by pediatric dentists and orthodontists. Have done as young as 4, but those are rare. Most of them do great on local + nitrous. For the older kids 10+ I will do valium + nitrous but I chose those cases carefully. Anything more complicated and I will bring in an anesthesiologist to do deep sedation.
Bottom line is that there is a spectrum of anesthetic options and there is no cookie-cutter approach. Where I see my colleages get into trouble is when they try to treat every patient the same way without any pre-procedure risk and behavior assessment. Chosing the right (and safest) way to treat is part of every case. All anesthetics have risk and bad things can happen, unfortunately, even to the best doctors.
In pediatric dentistry there area cases of kids, mostly low-SES, where they have rampant tooth decay from dental neglect, parents who avoid taking their kids to the dentist b/c they are scared themselves, this propagates the cycle of fear/pain/experience since the kids only see the dentist to have a major procedure, not a simple cleaning, etc. It's a bad deal. Many of these kids go to the OR at great expense, every 2-3 years for dental work with virtually no homecare or preventive care in between. Very sad.