Dental Sedation and Autism

 

Oral health care for a child with the diagnosis of autism is not much different from the oral health care of other children. However, children with autism often have difficulty in communication skills, so cooperation from your child might be a difficult challenge when visiting the dentist. For parents of children with autism, a visit to the dentist is more than a child opening his or her mouth and getting a reward after. If your child is too difficult to work with and the need for a dental procedure is urgent enough, a dentist may have no choice but to use dental sedation in order to perform his job.

What is dental sedation? Is it necessary? Is it safe?

Sedation is the utilization of medications called “sedatives” to create a state of relaxation. It is usually done to facilitate a medical, or in this case, dental procedure. There are three levels of sedation that may be used with pediatric patients that require extensive dental care:

-Conscious sedation is inducing a minimally depressed level of consciousness that retains the patient’s ability to maintain an open airway independently and continuously and respond appropriately to physical stimulation or verbal commands - Ash Jakhu.

-Deep sedation is a type of sedation in which the patient is not easily aroused and which may be accompanied by a partial loss of protective reflexes, including the ability to maintain an airway or to respond properly to physical stimulation or verbal commands.

-General anesthesia is an induced state of unconsciousness. The patient cannot respond to physical or verbal stimulation of any kind and it will be up to the dentist to insure that an airway is maintained.