Fear is a natural response to the unknown, especially if we see it as a threat to our privacy and produces a sense of alertness and anguish for the presence of a danger or evil, whether real or imaginary. Historically, dental treatments were invasive, which has linked the dentist with pain, nervousness and discomfort that cause us fear. Furthermore, the noise of the instruments, the smell of the materials and the fact that we cannot see and control what the dentist is doing, causes us to be helpless.

This fear increases when we are nervous, or if at the first visit to the dentist we had a bad experience. If adults are afraid of the dentist, what can we say about children? Parents are sometimes the cause of infusing it; with the famous phrase “it will not hurt” we put the child on alert, making the visit to the dentist a whole odyssey, since it is normal to get nervous, restless, more if it is the first time.

Fear leads us to cancel or postpone the maintenance visit at the dentist, which has negative effects on oral health. The mouth is a very sensitive organ. Usually we go or take our children to the dentist when the pain is unbearable and we have no other. This also causes the “fear of being scolded” in the dental clinic because we know that we have not followed the recommendations to prevent oral problems. There is no need to be ashamed, since the professional understands the difficulties that the patient has.

The dentist today

Going to the dentist is not the same as it was years ago. The oral health professionals are increasingly more prepared and have means to help make a more preventive and less invasive dentistry which avoids pain almost 100%.

Today, dental treatment is less or not at all aggressive. We have passed in a short time of the time of our grandparents in which the treatment of choice was the extraction; to the time of our parents where they saw that visiting the dentist could fix the teeth lengthening the average life of the mouth; to current dentistry, in which preventive approaches help us to avoid the disease.

We understand better their causes and we have markers that tell us what problems the patient is going to develop and which of them are going to suffer more easily (high risk people) to work on avoiding them. In short, we are dedicated to keeping the patient healthy, since, if the mouth is left to its free evolution, it inevitably becomes sick and deteriorating.

What to do to overcome fear?

  • Ask the dentist for explanations about the procedures he is going to carry out, being able to raise a hand to stop a few moments to control his anxiety.
  • Periodic reviews will help us maintain our health or detect any problem in time, so we can treat it more easily.
  • Take the child to the dentist when all the baby teeth have come out or when they turn 1 year old.
  • Maintain a proper oral hygiene, being necessary to brush the teeth after each meal and especially at night, before sleeping, flossing.
  • Listen to music with headphones to avoid noise and relax. Being relaxed helps control the level of anxiety, since, stress makes you more irritable and sensitive.

Conscious sedation, which is a type of sedation that keeps the patient awake, is currently being used in anxious and fearful patients. It is used nitrous oxide, a gas used with oxygen, which has the property of relaxing the patient, keeping him in a state of lethargy and slowing down his stimuli, making it ideal for long dental treatments, for the patient who suffers a severe dental disease, feels very afraid, people with physical disabilities, etc.

Conscious sedation keeps the patient awake, although during its effect he will not feel pain proper to the cure, he will wake up quickly without adverse reactions and after his effect he will not remember the dental process he went through.

Posted on by oakvill78.

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