To many people, the thought of visiting a dentist sends chills down the spine. It gets worse when the doctor suggests that the best way of treating the problem is removing the tooth or suggest any other painful procedures. Kids make the roup who are most vulnerable to such kind of fear. Nonetheless, modern medicine provides more comfortable ways of helping to ease the pain and even go through the process with a little comfort.
Nitrous oxide, also known as the laughing gas, is a safe and mild sedative that can assist your child in keeping calm during dental processes. It is also easy to administer primarily for children. There are several reasons why the dentist may consider administering laughing gas for your child.
What is The Laughing Gas?
Nitrogen oxide is a colorless and odorless gas that used as mild anesthesia. It has been in use for many years since its safe for use in dental work. Ordinarily, it has no long term side effects, and getting rid of it from the system after the procedure is straightforward.
When children are undergoing dental procedures, the laughing gas is a perfect sedative because it helps in many ways. For starters, it makes you more comfortable, thus giving the doctor an easy time. Additionally, laughing gas is useful because it doesn’t make patients sleep. It means that the dentist can ask then questions and get immediate feedback.
1. It Reduces Anxiety
When visiting the dentist, the fear of the unknown befalls children and sometimes the parent as well. Emotions of anxiety lead to uneasiness and even discomfort, especially before the process begins.
Nitrous oxide helps to ease these feelings, and the child calms down for the process to take place. After mixing the laughing gas with oxygen, inhalation of the gas happens using a small mask through your nose.
The dentist that offer sedation puts the mask on the child and connects it to a machine to help deliver a mixture of nitrous oxide and oxygen. The effect of the gas takes place in about five minutes, and the child experiences euphoric feelings such as tingling all over the body. This relaxes the child’s mind and makes them more cooperative.
2. Gets The Child Drowsy
The laughing gas may get your child a little drowsy, although it will not lead to deep sleep. It will enable the dentist to carry out the procedure with some easy. The gas is also administered alongside other sedatives but still doesn’t take the place of local anesthesia.
3. Nitrous Gas Calms the Brain
Nitrous gas has a calming effect on the brain. How it works is that it releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is responsible for emotional responses to the brain. The release of dopamine in the brain brings a wide range of emotional changes. The tickling effect caused by the laughing gas comes from this effect.
4. Speeds the Process
Most dental procedures require speed because actions like removing a tooth may turn out to be painful if it takes too long. When a patient relaxes, the dentist can carry out the procedure faster, saving on time and the trouble of going through so much pain.
A general observation is that modern dentistry is supposed to be slow to give the best results. The doctor starts with a chat with the Patient before starting the examination and more process. It means that by the time the procedure is happening, the Patient is anxious and uneasy. The effects of the laughing gas can help remove these feelings in children.
5. Helps Dentists to Cultivate a good Rapport with the Patient
The laughing gas should make the patient feel pleasant and relaxed. The laughing gas has been so good that some people use it for recreation in some parts. Taking advantage of this effect, the doctor can cultivate a good relationship with the child, making the dental visit memorable. This also becomes a good way of securing future visits, unlike as opposed to taking home memories of pain from the dentist.
6. It Works With Other Anesthetics
One of the best things about the laughing gas is that it is mostly harmless yet useful in a wide range of aspects. This gas works with other sedatives without causing any harm to the child.
The introduction of the laughing gas into the dental procedure adds to the much-needed relief without breaking any rules of the process. This is the right way of ensuring that the dentist carries out a successful operation while maintaining the attention of the Patient.
Since it works well with other anesthetics, it means that it dentist can achieve more using the mixture. So, if anesthetics lacks some of the useful features that nitric oxide contains or the opposite is true, then the combination will deliver a perfect balance.
7. Allows Dentists to Focus and Concentrate
Handling children can be a daunting task. It can get worse when the treatment requiresa medical procedure. Visiting the dentist makes them fidgety, and they may end up giving the doctor a hard time. The dentist might not focus and concentrate very well when a child not settled. The laughing gas comes in handy as it will help the patient to drift into a euphoric world, and the doctor can concentrate on the task at hand.
Conclusion
The use of nitrous gas in medical procedures dates back more than 150 years. It is a benign or friendly gas because it can evoke tickling feelings in humans. Although the exact process of how it brings about these feelings is still undiscovered, its use continues on a wide scale for medical and recreational purposes.
Considering that density requires high precision and speed, laughing gas plays a crucial role. The presence of a parent as a dental procedure is taking place further helps to provide emotional and physical support.
My daughter is extremely anxious about going to the dentist for the first time. I’ve been looking up some ways to help her and I learned from here that they actually use laughing gas to help calm young patients. I’d like to talk to a specialist about whether or not this could a good option for her.