Oral Sedation
The use of oral sedative drugs (drugs taken by mouth,
ie tablets and syrups) has a long and chequered history in dentistry.
So far these drugs have fallen well short of the 'ideal'
sedative. This is because it can be difficult to predict how soon
after taking the drug the patient is at the most sedated state.
Some patients may take several minutes and some only a few minutes.
This means that in order to prevent the patient being 'under the
influence' before they arrive at the surgery, ie whilst they are
not under the dentists' supervision, the drug needs to be administered
in the surgery.
This means an often impractible wait of 30-45 minutes
whilst the effect becomes apparent. All this time generally means
more expense and as the time course of satisfactory recovery is
quite variable between patient to patient you may have to wait
in the surgery for even longer after the dental work has been
completed.
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