Sedation and General Anesthesia

Sedation dentistry is the use of a medicine to put your child into an altered state of consciousness to allow dental treatment to proceed. Dr. Rau is our sedation dentist. He often uses mild to moderate sedations to treat children. We do sedations on Mondays. Sedation dentistry is relatively safe and is about 70% effective.

General anesthesia is often used for young children with a lot of cavities and/or children with prohibitive behavior. Many special needs children are treated under general anesthesia due to medical issues that prohibit normal dentistry or sedation. General anesthesia is a good option to keep children relatively safe by doing dentistry while the child is asleep. Children treated this way generally have no memory of the treatment.