Dr. Green: Why IV Sedation Is a Game-Changer for Complex Dental Cases

Video Transcript:

As you take on bigger cases and you try to make your time more productive, you find that patients want to get things done quickly or want to get a lot done at once, and then you’re an hour in, and they start to have second thoughts. They can start to become uncomfortable, just with having been there for that long.

Being able to sedate them helps the time pass and helps them have a better experience. I always tell my patients, no one loves having this done. Like I hate having dental work done. No one loves having dental work done.

Hi, I am Dr. Jordon Green. I practice in Midland, Texas; and right now I’m at the Vesper Institute becoming IV sedation certified.

I treat a lot of complex restorative cases in my practice, and I’ve been doing a lot of oral conscious sedation. In doing that, I’ve learned how unpredictable it is, I’ve come to realize it would actually be safer with an IV, as medications are more titratable.

I came across Vesper in a webinar put on by the DEO (Dental Entrepreneur Organization), and it was one of the dentists talking about their practice model and how they’ve incorporated it into their practice. And he recommended Vesper because that’s where he and his associates have come for their training.

I’ve been very impressed for two reasons. One is the approachability of the people teaching. Some of ’em are oral surgeons in that, but they’ve all been really, really great and really practical and not acting like this should be an elite group of people that have the privilege providing this, but more that we as dentists need to do better in offering things like this to our patients

There’s a lot of what we’ve been going over that even if you weren’t doing IV sedation just from a medical emergency perspective, you should be more prepared, better prepared, more comfortable treating a lot of these things because almost all of it’s not just specific to a patient that’s being sedated. It could all happen at any time.

And I think a lot of dentists just assume because they don’t have an IV in someone’s arm or using certain types of drugs that they’re not going to have some kind of problem arise in their office.

I know that a lot of dentists are worried about the safety of IV sedation, and as you look at the requirements and things that you need to be proficient in, it can be really intimidating. But I think that there’s not anything you learn here that couldn’t be used on a daily basis, regardless of whether or not you’re doing an IV sedation. So you need to be comfortable with these things anyway. And the more comfortable you are, the more comfortable you can be in sedation.

Dentists who are treating more complex cases would be wise to implement IV sedation because a lot of those anxious patients who have gone so long without seeing a dentist, when they do finally get up the nerve to come in, they’re usually not in a really good place and they’re going to need a lot of dentistry. And being able to provide that comfortably to them can help not only provide a great service for that part of the population, but it can also help you have more productive days and more productive appointments.