One of the things that I hear so often from my patients who haven’t been to the dentist in a long time is the anxiety surrounding the appointment and usually that stems from a past experience. I myself have had a horrible experience as a child and it I know stopped me from going to the dentist and a lot of my patients tell me the same thing. What I would have to say to those patients is every experience that you have is going to be a different one especially if it’s in a different office and for those patients who have a very high or severe level of anxiety we do have options to help get you through that, IV sedation being one of those.
Just simply talking to the patient, having a conversation and establishing a trust in a judgment-free environment where the patient can feel heard and listened to. Sometimes that alone is all you need. We’re humans, we can discuss what your concerns are and what your fears are if you have any and usually just talking through those and explaining things can just alleviate that mild anxiety or uncertainty.
When you allow dental anxiety to get the best of you and prevent you from coming to the dentist, things can start off as small issues and may not be painful but as time goes on that feeling might become a root canal and then eventually you might not be able to save the tooth and it’s an extraction and then these things just compound as time goes on and then next thing you know it’s been 10 to 15 years and there’s a whole lot of work that needs to be done and it can get quite serious. There have been studies out there that show that at least 60 percent of the population has dental anxiety so there’s no reason to be embarrassed about it. We understand that the dentist might not be the first place you want to go so we understand that and we want to have that conversation about what causes that anxiety and we also have a lot of tools in our toolbox to be able to help alleviate anxiety.
