Dr. Dattani explains: Intravenous sedation is an injection in the back of the hand that makes you sleepy and drowsy, in a sense you don’t know what’s going on, you don’t care what’s going on you don’t feel what’s going on most patients come around not knowing whatís actually happened and actually feel they’ve been asleep. Medically you’ve never been asleep. The best way to describe it, I have just given two bottles of wine to drink within 2 seconds flat, you’re made to feel very very drunk! You can have intravenous sedation for a simple clean all the way to implant dentistry or a smile makeover. But the aim of sedation is to get you into that chair more comfortably and to actually wean you off and make you less nervous. I always challenge my patients that one day they will not have sedation because they’ll be more relaxed so initially when I first meet an extremely nervous patient sedation is a very good way to actually get their mouth healthy to get them out of pain, but it’s just a starting point in a long relationship of getting you less nervous. It’s a bit like giving up smoking, you first of all try with patches, try with some nicotine replacement as time goes on you actually think ‘this isn’t too bad I can actually do it by myself’ and that’s what sedation will help you do.
