At MeinZahn, we make good use of every option to make your dental treatment painfree and free of anxiety. To help you relax in the dentist’s chair, we employ effective local anaesthetics, elements of dental hypnosis and, if you require them, gentle sedatives.
General anaesthesia for complex procedures – and as an option for fearful patients and children
Some patients experience panic prior to a dental appointment. Maybe you have had a bad experience with a “representative of the craft”. Or maybe you are just particularly sensitive towards pain and the invasion of personal space that a dental examination invariably involves. Please don’t let this panic keep you from taking care of your teeth. Indefinitely postponing necessary prophylactic and therapeutic measures brings along the risk of sooner or later turning your mouth into a major crisis site.
Don’t let that happen! In cases of extreme dental fear, treatment under general anaesthesia can spare you stress, anxiety and pain. The same is true for extended and complex dental or surgical procedures. Extraction of several teeth, placement of a number of implants, bone augmentation measures or the surgical removal of a large abscess often warrant general anaesthesia. In any case, talk to us if you think general anaesthesia might be a useful option for you – we will advise you comprehensively. For toddlers and childern with pronounced dental fear, a gentle paediatric narcosis that is attuned the physiological and administererd according to the psychological needs of children may sometimes be the only remaining option to ensure the performing of necessary dental work without further deteriorating our little patient’s already strained relationship with their dentist.
You can get further Informations about the costs of a general anaesthesia in our download section(german only) or directly in our Practice in 1010 Vienna.
Details of treatment under general anaesthesia
During treatment that is performed under general anaesthesia, there will be an anaesthesist present in addition to the dental personnel. The anaesthesist will first inject you with a well-tolerated agent that will make you fall asleep. During the anaesthesia, you will breathe through a thin breathing tube that will also be used to continually administer a finetuned dosage of narcotic and lauging gas to maintain your painless deep sleep.
Your blood pressure, heart rate and blood oxygen are continually monitored. After the procedure is finished, the dosage of the narcotic is slowly reduced to zero. After a while, you will wake up – but you will have to spend the next one or two hours in the recovery room. Please don’t expect to be all alert and bouncy immediately. Probably you will feel sort of dazed and drowsy for a while. Please make sure there is another person to accompany you on the way home.
Advantages and disadvantages of dental general anaesthesia
The advantages of general anaesthesia are obvious:
- You remain painfree during the procedure, and also for some time afterwards
- You retain no unpleasant memories of what happened during the anaesthesia
- Your body will display no or hardly any stress reactions, like pulse, blood pressure and temperature variations
However, general anaesthesia can bring along complications. Advanced age, heart disease and certain metabolic disorders increase the risk that the artificial deep sleep poses for the body. We want to – and in fact, we are obliged to – tell you about those risks during an initial consultation. However, extensive preliminary examinations and the responsible work of our qualified anaesthesists reduce the actual risk of general anaesthesia at MeinZahn to a vanishingly small residual value. Normal side effects of general anaesthesia may occur. Expect some nausea, drowsiness, fatigue, maybe a little cardiovascular trouble. Optimally, you should treat yourself to a bit of rest on the next day, too.