Sedation Dentistry for Nervous Patients: Your Options Explained

Sedation dentistry uses a calming medicine, taken orally or breathed in, to help you feel relaxed through an appointment you'd otherwise find impossible. It doesn't put you to sleep — you stay conscious and able to respond throughout.

Our sedation-trained clinicians are certified to administer both oral and inhalation sedation. You don't need to justify wanting it, and you don't need to have tried and failed at a normal appointment first — telling us when you book is enough.

Oral sedation

A tablet taken before your appointment that leaves you calm and drowsy, though still conscious and able to respond. Because it takes a little time to work and leaves you unfit to drive, you'll need someone to bring you and take you home.

Inhalation sedation

A gas breathed in through a small nose mask throughout the appointment, adjusted in real time to how relaxed you need to be. It wears off within minutes of the mask coming off, so most people can drive themselves home afterwards.

Which suits you depends on how anxious you are and on your own health — that's talked through before either is arranged, not assumed.

• Tell us when you book, not when you arrive — it changes how the appointment itself is planned.
• Say what you're anxious about specifically — needles, the sound, a past bad experience — so we know what to explain and what to avoid mentioning.
• Ask about arrangements for getting home if oral sedation is what you need.

More on how we help nervous patients

• Dental Anxiety? Here's How We Make Your Visit Stress-Free — the calm-environment side of things.
• Dental emergency? What to do right now — for when fear and pain hit at the same time.
• What happens during root canal treatment — one of the appointments people most often want sedation for.