Comments on: Humane Dentistry

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:57:12 +0000

I’ve never had laughing gas either. However, I didn’t see dentists very often as a child, so it might be more common for children. My husband’s had laughing gas, but that’s partially because he is/was allergic to novacaine.

I agree anasthesia is no minor thing. There are always risks involved, though the risk is small. Alex has been under anesthesia before, and for him they need an anti-nausea medication, too. He has a very strong gag reflex and the anasthesia tends to make him feel nauseated. It’s certainly not something I want to do, but I don’t want his teeth rotting from lack of proper care and strong teeth don’t exactly run in our family.

Thank you for your well-wishes! I’m sure we’ll need them.

By: Lizard Queen

Lizard Queen — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 11:19:35 +0000

I’m not surprised that you need to jump thru joops to get general anaesthesia. It’s no minor thing.

I try to avoid dentistry as much as possible, but I can say that in all of my life I’ve never been given laughing gas for dentistry, and have never seen or heard of another person that I know having had it during dentistry. They do use it for childbirth in Australian hospitals, but I don’t know if it is used by dentists in Australia.

Good luck and best wishes!

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 10:47:30 +0000

Alex also has the sensitivities you described, which is part of the problem. Here it takes special permission to get the general anesthesia, so we have to try and fail using other techniques. And I did learn about the concerns about happy gas from another blogger. The dentist wasn’t aware of the issue until I brought it to her attention, so we’re getting Alex tested for the deficiencies (B12) that relate to the documented cases she was able to find. Results aren’t in yet.

We have similar cleaning opportunities through the school system, but it doesn’t go to regular denistry, just cleanings.

The baby tooth wasn’t too much of problem, because the root had been mostly absorbed, but it was still more than could have done without something for the pain and it still was a lot of fuss. And I did learn that baby teeth do start out with roots, but the body usually absorbs the root when the adult tooth comes out, which is why they get lose. Alex’s root was mostly absorbed, but the gum was still tight around the tooth.

By: Lizard Queen

Lizard Queen — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:08:13 +0000

And another thing – I expect that baby teeth that won’t fall out should be very easy for a dentist to deal with. I don’t think they have any roots and they seem to come out without much bother. I don’t recall if such extractions required any anaesthetic.

By: Lizard Queen

Lizard Queen — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:01:46 +0000

It’s interesting to compare your situation (in the US?) with our experiences of dentistry with autism-type issues in Australia. Our kids have autistic traits and above-average intelligence. One has consistent and universal sensory hypersensitivity, including an acutely sensitive throat and mouth, that has resulted in gagging during dental procedures and troubles when the child was too young to brush own teeth. I presume that retching during dental procedures would be highly dangerous. Added to this our child has had smell/flavour hypersensitivity that makes strongly smelling or flavoured medicines, mouthwashes or disnifectant smells intolerable. Where we live the government has provided free dental clinics to school-aged children. Cases that cannot be dealt with at these clinics go onto a long waiting list to go to a big state-of-the-art teaching clinic, or to a hospital for general anaesthetic. Free government dentistry is now imploding due to lack of staff.

We have found that at the school clinics one may find a clinic that absolutely reeks of disinfectant, and staff who are either untrained or uninterested in dealiing with the type of issues that our child had. Our child has had to go under general (not laughing gas, which has questions about it’s safety) for extractions at a hospital. For fillings and examinations a combination of two special interventions has worked most successfully at the state-of-the-art clinic; gum massage at the beginning of the procedure to desensitize and relax I guess, and dental dams I guess to prevent anything touching the back of the throat. The reek of disinfectant and strong-tasting mouthwashes that we enountered at the school dental clinic were apparently unecessary, because neither of these things were found at the modern teaching clinic. No special blankets were offered. Now I’m hoping our child will be old and experienced enough to cope with standard dentistry next dental procedure. Fingers crossed.