Most children are not exactly fond of visits to the dental office… There may even be some – or a lot of – drama: fear, crying, refusal. Distressed parents might have considered paediatric general anaesthesia for their offspring to finally make a sorely needed caries treatment possible. Please reconsider, as there is another option. Laughing gas sedation is much gentler on the body, very convenient – and fantastically efficient.
Well-known in other countries
In the US, in Scandinavia and the Netherlands, apprehensive children regularly benefit from laughing gas sedation. For some reason, however, in Germany and Austria, this mainstay of classic dentistry, around for 150 years, has been forgotten or frowned upon for decades. Now, laughing gas is rediscoverd here, too.
You can get further Informations about the costs of a laughing gas treatment for children in our download section(german only) or directly in our Practice in 1010 Vienna.
Laughing gas sedation for children – technical details
We perform the inhalation sedation with laughing gas for children aged four years and older according to the guidelines of the European Academy for Paediatric Dentistry (EAPD). Please make sure your child does not eat or drink for two hours prior to the appointment.
WThe gas is breathed through a nosepiece, mixed with pure oxygen (and a pleasant scent your child gets to pick from a number of options). For the first couple of minutes, pure oxygen is inhaled. Then the laughing gas percentage is gradually increased up to 50 percent. During sedation, we control pulse and blood oxygen with the help of a pulse oximeter clipped to a finger. As soon as the sedation takes effect, a local anaesthetic can be injected, if required. We end the treatment with five minutes of pure oxygen through the nosepiece to flush the remainders of laughing gas from the lungs. After 15 minutes, our little patients are usually up and about again – longer lasting effects are rarely seen.
When we won’t perform a laughing gas sedation
There is one essential thing for laughing gas sedation to be effective: unobstructed nasal breathing. A stuffy or runny nose, not a rare occurence in children, precludes the inhalation sedation. So, if your child suffers from a cold, sinusitis, tonsilitis or another disease of the upper airways, we must ask you for a little patience and postpone the treatment until the patient can again breathe freely.