Is dispensing Valium considered conscience sedation in dentistry?!
Question: I am a dentist and yes it is considered conscious sedation. Usually it is used in combination with 1 or 2 other drugs in the same family to optimize the effectiveness. I use 3 drugs in combination and they produce an almost sleep like state, where you are awake and responsive but usually keep on falling asleep. I monitor BP, Heart rate, and Pulse Oximetetry. If he/she is just handing you a valium that is not sedation, but if used in combination of other drugs to a sleep-like state, with amnesia so you don't remember your experience, and with proper monitoring this is sedation. With conscious sedation there is no way you can drive to the office or home, you would be too groggy.
In response to the posting above conscious sedation is just as the name implies conscious. It is done with pills, no IV drugs are used at all. The patient never falls into the deeper stages of anesthesia and because this is the case no anesthesiologist is needed.
Hope this helps
Answers: I am a dentist and yes it is considered conscious sedation. Usually it is used in combination with 1 or 2 other drugs in the same family to optimize the effectiveness. I use 3 drugs in combination and they produce an almost sleep like state, where you are awake and responsive but usually keep on falling asleep. I monitor BP, Heart rate, and Pulse Oximetetry. If he/she is just handing you a valium that is not sedation, but if used in combination of other drugs to a sleep-like state, with amnesia so you don't remember your experience, and with proper monitoring this is sedation. With conscious sedation there is no way you can drive to the office or home, you would be too groggy.
In response to the posting above conscious sedation is just as the name implies conscious. It is done with pills, no IV drugs are used at all. The patient never falls into the deeper stages of anesthesia and because this is the case no anesthesiologist is needed.
Hope this helps
yes, because it helps to relax you if you are a panicker. and you are still very much aware while on them.
Not if it's given by itself. At the most it can only make you a little drowsy.
Some doctors will give Valium intravenously with other medications when they do conscious sedation.
I occasionally will give IV morphine, Valium, and etomidate to put people to sleep for short painful procedures. I use the Valium for its muscle relaxing effects, not for the sedation.
Valium given alone is by no means a form of conscious sedation, and if that is how the dentist is billing it, then he's a fraud.
Be careful of any dentist who wants to conscious sedate you. If he does, he should have an anesthesiologist or nurse anesthetists present.
Dentist's aren't trained to deal with the complications of putting people to sleep. It would be a shame to go in far a crown and come out a vegetable b/c something went wrong and your brain went without oxygen for a few minutes.
That's exactly what happened in Chicago last year. A dentist who didn't know what he was doing tried to put a 3 year old to sleep. She went too deep and wasn't breathing well. She didn't die, but she's a vegetable now.