My name is Dr. Glen Atlas, I’m an MD, medical doctor. I specialize in anesthesiology. And I come to Dr. Strauss’s office and administer anesthesia to the patients so Jerry can safely do dental work and I take care of the anesthesia end of the patient. IV sedation, it stands for intravenous, it’s administered through an IV. And we’re able to very quickly adjust the medication so that the patient’s depth of anesthesia is just right. And the medications are very short acting, we can make them deeper or lighter within a very short period of time. And patients recover from it very quickly with minimal side effects.
First I speak to the patient directly and make sure that their medical history is compatible with an anesthetic in a dental office setting. This isn’t for everybody, if somebody has a sever coronary artery disease, lung disease, kidney disease, this type of thing, they may not be candidates. However most people can safely receive anesthesia in this setting with a reasonable medical history taken.
Patients can be made very deep very quickly. They can be lightened up very quickly, and this can be
adjusted to their needs within a moment’s notice. Oral medications don’t work as quickly and can’t be titrated or adjusted as well. Typical patient will show up, okay I show up about an hour ahead of time, I set up my equipment. Patient shows up with his or her ride. Dr. Strauss and his team are ready for the patient. Patient sits down in the chair, I start the IV on the patient, and patient will get very comfortable, very forgetful, extremely relaxed, and then Dr. Strauss can administer local anesthesia which is still used and the patient will be very comfortable.
The medications are all very short acting, by stopping them the patient can walk out of here in approximately half an hour.
Doctor Strauss worked with a previous dentist that I worked with and as a result it became his practice. I had porcelain veneers placed on about 90% of my teeth. I would say the experience that I had with Dr. Strauss was extremely positive. From the moment I entered the office to the moment I left my final appointment with an extraordinary set of porcelain veneers placed in my mouth it was extremely positive. I the most important thing about Dr. Strauss was he was a man of his word and throughout the entire process he was extremely nice, extremely professional in his workmanship, and kept me very comfortable.
I think that in any profession we get complacent and it is clear to me that Dr. Strauss has not taken his learning from as many years ago as he may have acquired it in dental school and kept it current from that point. It is important for me to know and for his patients to know that he has kept up with in service training, probably has developed his own workshops, and has brought into this office that he works in all of the current technology. And I think it’s his premiere goal to make sure his patients reap the benefits of his training.
I came across Dr. Strauss actually from my wife’s dentist. He was recommended very highly by him and I had an issue with my teeth and he recommended Dr. Strauss and said that he would take care of me and everything would be fine. In the beginning I would smile but it was always kind of a shy smile. I would try to hide it. I mean if I laughed I’d try to turn my head or something like that. Now with the Invitations I don’t even have to think about it. It changed my smile and it also changed even the way I eat food. So it was definitely worthwhile, it was definitely worth the time. In less than a year it was a major improvement.
When I came in to see Dr. Strauss for the Invitations I wanted to improve my smile, that’s really the main reason I came in here. The first thing we had to do was take impressions of my teeth which was a relatively quick process. Waited a few weeks for the impressions to come back and then I was fitted with the invisaligh, the braces themselves, which was a little bit uncomfortable in the beginning because there is some pressure on your teeth and they’re starting to change their form. Other than that once they were in and once I got used to them in a couple of days there was no pain at all, no discomfort at all.
You know when I came in to see Dr. Strauss it was a great experience. I mean he was my dentist before I had the Invisaligns anyway but I’m very comfortable with the staff and everyone. Everything is run smoothly here, never have to wait for an appointment, everything runs well. The experience of the Invisalign was great. I’m wearing the retainers now after the Invisaligns straightened out my teeth but all in all it was a great experience. And once they were in I wore them 18 to 20 hours a day, I didn’t even know they were in most of the day. Everybody that sees my smile now is amazed, and amazed in the time frame that it happened in. So especially my children too, now that we’re taking family photos and stuff like that now they tell you to smile it’s just right on cue and I’m done, I don’t have to think at all about it. I definitely would recommend Dr. Strauss to someone else. You want to come in here and relax and be at ease and have a good time, because the staff in here will keep you comfortable and it’s worthwhile, it’s worth a visit.
Dental phobia is very common. Reports say that 50% of the people in this country don’t visit a dentist out of fear. And we now through the concept of sedation can get these people to come in. We’ve seen people that have never had dental work come through dentistry and want to have more of it. It’s something that allows people that are very anxious, very fearful, it allows them to come in and have dentistry done.
People come in and tell us that they’ve had their hands to the chairs and they’ve had experiences that were very painful and that the dentist didn’t stop, and we’ve heard many many stories of past histories of things that have had, sometimes through just perception, sometimes they’re real. Many times they’re actual stories that have happened. And in the back of their mind this is what dentistry has always been. But it’s no longer like that, and we can go ahead at Aesthetic Dental Care of New Jersey we can change that, we can go ahead and get them comfortable, we can do the things that they never had before.
Sometimes they’re real, sometimes they’re not. But perception is real. And so even if people remember something that happened many many years ago people go ahead in the back of their mind have something that they think of and relate to a bad experience. It’s deep seeded and sometimes it takes a lot to overcome that fear. Good news of the day is that at Aesthetic Dental Care of New Jersey we conquer the fear. There is oral conscious sedation that’s available through a pill form and there’s IV sedation that is delivered by an anesthesiologist who will monitor the patient. And sometimes people just come in and want to have the edge taken off and we use nitrous oxide for that which is just simply another vehicle that allows us to go ahead and deliver the care for someone who’s not petrified but just want to take the edge off. Things have changed in dentistry over the years that probably we don’t even do things the same way that we did them 5 years ago so let alone 20 years ago. And we’ve come a long way in dentistry. The philosophy is that if you can get into the door we’ll help you get the work done.
You must find someone who has had both the training and the experience. We’ve done a lot of training with the Docs Society which is the oral conscious sedation people that do a lot of training. We’ve done courses at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. We continue to do training sessions there. And we continue to keep abreast of what’s happening with the sedation dentistry end of it. If they’re really interested in just being a little bit uncomfortable, they’re really not that anxious, they may have someone deliver some nitrous oxide to them. If they’re feeling that they want to have much more comfort than that they should look for someone who’s trained in conscious sedation, someone who’s had the experiences, someone who can develop a relationship with them based on trust that they know how to do this. If they’re very very fearful then we go to the next step which is the IV sedation with Dr. Atlas. That is something that helps people that either have had extremely bad experiences or just very painful, fearful experiences, and we can overcome that.
Oral sedation is based on giving people some pills, some liquids, that are medications that they swallow and we go ahead and monitor them just again as if it were in a hospital, we’re monitoring them constantly, and everybody reacts a little bit differently to the medications and so we have to go ahead and spend the time delivering these medications. They usually are along the lines of either halcyon or triazalam, visceral, different medications that will keep people awake yet sedate. People that are having oral sedation are not being knocked out. People think that sometimes they want to be sedated to a point where they’re asleep, this is not sleep dentistry. So they’re still in control, sometimes people want to be in control of things. So they’re still awake, they’re still aware, we’re still carrying on conversations, it’s just that they’re very comfortable, the anxiety level drops immensely, and they’re still able to communicate and they are in control but they’re just much more relaxed.
Poor candidates for oral sedation are medically compromised patients, they are people that have a history of smoking, people with drug abuse. These are people that are harder to sedate with oral sedation. That’s when we bring in Dr. Atlas, and Dr. Atlas will then give them IV sedation which basically will put them to sleep and he will monitor them for their medical benefit.
An oral sedation appointment may be just an appointment for as little as maybe a cleaning for some people. It may be a limited type of situation where we’re doing just one root canal. Or it may be somebody that wants the edge taken off because it’s a long appointment and we might be doing 5 or 6 hours worth of dentistry. It may be for veneers, it may be for root canals, it may be for an entire plethora of dentistry all at one time. The nice feature of sedation dentistry is you can keep the patient in the chair for many hours and keep them comfortable, whereas without it it might be a long day if they’re gonna be in the chair for 5 or 6 hours.
