Taylor Tate, DDS, a clinical instructor at the Salt Lake City, UT, site of DOCS Education's IV sedation dentistry program, shows how sedation can boost patient care and be a positive addition to dental workflows
Hearing lots of "noise" about what could go wrong with sedation dentistry? Worried about the extra costs of training, malpractice insurance, and equipment? Here, Dr. Tate draws on several years of clinical experience to set the record straight when it comes to common sedation myths.
It’s Too Risky
Many clinicians voice concerns that sedation dentistry is a high-risk treatment protocol.
“One thing that’s great about a DOCS Education course is how much students learn about pharmacology and patient selection—a lot of safety comes down to selecting the right patients to be sedated,” Dr. Tate said. “The medications we use are very safe and we teach clinicians how to use them. One of the biggest things—and I love having this as a safety net—is that every medication that we use has a reversal agent.
“We’ve done thousands of sedations, in the clinic and in my practice, and only 1 person has ever needed to be reversed,” he continued. “As long as you follow the protocols, sedation is a very safe procedure.”
Insurance Will Be Expensive
Malpractice insurance may go up, but the increase is often minor. While overhead costs are a common worry, Dr. Tate assured that equipment and medication expenses are relatively low.
“My premiums only increased $200 when I added IV sedation,” Dr. Tate shared, “and rates actually increase more for All-on-X treatment than for a moderate sedation permit."
Once a practice makes the initial investment for a monitoring system—and related equipment such as a pulse oximeter—and then begins offering sedation dentistry, he added, the cost of maintaining a supply of medications and disposables is minimal.
Demand for sedation dentistry is also rising, Dr. Tate said, especially among the aging population and patients with special needs—a trend that translates directly into practice growth.
Sedation Is Necessary Only for Advanced Treatments
Some clinicians tell Dr. Tate they don’t need a sedation protocol because their general dentistry workflow doesn’t include advanced treatments, such as full-mouth dental implants.
“You don’t have to be doing complex dentistry to justify having IV sedation in your office,” Dr. Tate said. “I have many patients with high anxiety—a recent patient just needed scaling and root planing, and I was able to clean his entire mouth in 1 appointment because he was sedated. There’s an efficiency aspect too: with many patients, I can complete in 1 visit what would otherwise take 2 or 3. As efficiency increases, so does revenue.”
