So dental anxiety is a real thing, and the best way to manage it is to talk to the patient about it, have a conversation with them about it, because sometimes it’s just the needle. Sometimes it’s just the anesthetic that they’re worried about. Once the anesthetic is done, they calm down.
Others have true horror stories from their childhood, and they want some nitrous oxide, or they want some kind of a sedative just to kind of calm themselves down, and we can provide that. The easiest way to manage dental anxiety is to give them a nose cone and have nitrous oxide as just kind of a relaxant gas to just kind of calm them down. They say it equates to about two glasses of wine, so people can get pretty comfortable there.
If they can’t do that, or if it’s a procedure that disallows it, and they can have somebody drive them to and from the office, then we can prescribe something a little bit stronger.