Patients do not have to have a referral for oral conscious sedation at We Care Dental Care. Just give us a call at 540-427-7274 to make an appointment.
Oral conscious sedation will cost more than laughing gas but be far less expensive than general anesthesia in a hospital setting. Patients are often referred to my office because other offices attempted laughing gas, which was not sufficient. This makes oral conscious sedation the most cost-effective way to get the treatment done.
No, you do not. We can do this type of treatment in the office.
I have seen a handful of insurance companies pay for a portion of the sedation in my experience. We always submit it to insurance just in case, but we don’t expect insurance to pay. You may hear from your insurance company that “sedation” is covered, but the insurance company usually means general anesthesia in a hospital when they state this. The copay for general anesthesia is often more than the full fee for oral sedation.
At We Care Dental Care, we work with Care Credit to provide financing options. This can include 12 months interest-free. We can provide you information for Care Credit to see what you may qualify for.
Typically yes. When doing this kind of sedation, there are two major limiting factors. The first will be based on the patient’s weight. This will determine the amount of local anesthetic used. For very young and very small children, the amount of local anesthetic I can give may be limited. Time is the second factor. The drugs I used give about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes of working time when the patient will be the most relaxed. If the patient needs a considerable amount of treatment and I can not complete it in an hour, the sedation may be slit into multiple appointments.
I always like to prioritize what is giving the patient pain. I will prioritize the work from most to least important and take care of the most critical items on the first sedation.
I have done over 1,300 cases.
The drugs are administered in small syringes and dispensed by the doctor in the office. The sedation drugs are in liquid form, not a pill. A prescription is written for each patient, and all the medication I use comes from a local compound pharmacy.
Your child will also be given nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas. This is administered through a rubber nasal hood that sits in front of your child’s nose.
Around 45 minutes.
The sedation drug is primarily to help with anxiety. To make sure the patient is not in any pain during treatment, a local anesthetic or a “shot” will need to be given. Often, because the patient is so relaxed, they do not notice when we numb them.
I typically block off from 8:00 am to 10:30 am for my sedations in my office. This allows for medication to be given, the medicine to take effect, treatment to be completed, and additional time for notes and clean up. No other patients are scheduled during this time. Dr. Burkitt believes very strongly in only having one patient in the office during sedation so that all of his focus can be on that one patient.
Your child will not able able to eat or drink after midnight the night before.
Dr. Burkitt will need to do a consultation to evaluate your child’s medical history, dental needs, and airways. If he determines that sedation is not a good option, he will discuss other alternatives that might be better for your child’s specific needs.
Immediately after the appointment, Dr. Burkitt will speak with the patients to review everything that was done and any specific after-treatment recommendations. Dr. Burkitt also makes sure to call all his sedation patients in the afternoon to check on them.