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Safe, Reputable Sedation Options

In keeping with his reputation as someone who makes his patients feel respected and at ease, Dr. Lais will sit down with you before every procedure for a one-on-one conversation about the ways we can minimize any discomfort and anxiety during treatment.

Sedation is one of the most effective ways to ensure your dental treatment is as painless and stress-free as possible. With his attention to detail and pursuit of excellence, Dr. Lais’ mission is to make you completely relaxed and comfortable while helping you reach and maintain optimum dental health.

We will create a personalized treatment plan that will give you a relaxing and worry-free dental care experience. Here are several of the safe and effective sedation options we can discuss with you during your visit:

NuCalm
NuCalm is a remarkably safe, natural, and effective sedation process for patients undergoing painful dental procedures. It relaxes patients and minimizes pain without the use of narcotics or controlled substances.

Using micro-electronic currents, noise-reducing headphones, and blackout glasses, this revolutionary technology naturally brings your body to the first stage of sleep. With NuCalm, you will feel the same way you do just as you are about to fall asleep, and this feeling will last through the duration of your treatment.

To date, more than 32,400 dental patients across the United States have experienced calm and relaxing dental appointments using NuCalm, all without a single reported adverse experience. 98 percent of patients who have experienced NuCalm say they would recommend it to their friends and family.

Once the dental appointment is completed, you can leave our office immediately with no side effects, no impairments, and no recovery time.  You will leave feeling relaxed and rejuvenated, and you will be able to drive afterwards and continue the rest of the day as normal.

Nitrous Oxide
When using nitrous oxide as a sedative, we will carefully place a fitted mask over your nose. As you breath naturally through your nose, the nitrous oxide’s relaxing and pain-killing properties will take effect within 2-3 minutes, calming you and minimizing discomfort during your procedure.

These effects are completely gone within minutes of the gas being turned off after your treatment. This allows you to relax during your treatment and resume normal activities once your appointment is over.

I.V. Sedation
Dr. Lais is one of the few dentists in the state of Arkansas who is licensed to provide I.V. sedation, which is the safest way to sedate a patient. With I.V. sedation, you will be completely relaxed and calm while still being able to respond normally to questions from Dr. Lais and his staff. This allows years of dental problems to be treated in fewer appointments.

Most patients who choose I.V. sedation do not recall the procedure the next day, making this an excellent option for highly anxious patients. After undergoing I.V. sedation, you will need to have a driver take you home, and Dr. Lais recommends you rest for the duration of the day after being treated.

For those who cannot tolerate any kind of sedation, we have access to a surgery center for general anesthesia. Oral sedation is also available for those who are uncomfortable being attached to an I.V.

Facts About Wisdom Teeth

A large number of people do not have room for wisdom teeth. This may be the result of an evolutionary change because our diet has changed over thousands of years and we don’t eat as many greens and nuts and our jaws are not as big as they used to be. We are seeing more and more people in the past few generations did not even form some of their wisdom teeth. Those who do have wisdom teeth and don’t have room for them will get impacted teeth. When a tooth becomes impacted it can do damage to the tooth in front of it.

Depending on how it’s sitting in the jaw bone(or what happens in most cases) the wisdom tooth will come part way out of the jaw and then the gum tissue surrounding the enamel covered crown of the tooth can’t adhere to the enamel and a pocket forms. Food can get trapped in the pocket and cause an infection caused periocornitis. This infection causes swelling and pus from around the wisdom tooth that will come and go but become more frequent and severe over time. Quite often it is necessary to remove those wisdom teeth and, in many cases, it is a surgical procedure to extract the tooth.

In our office, we provide IV sedation so that the patient isn’t aware of the treatment while it is going on, and will recover better than with just using a local anesthetic. Taking out wisdom teeth is sometimes an elective thing but it is usually best to do it when the patient is younger before the bone becomes dense. Early extraction also gives less likelihood of the wisdom teeth causing damage to the other teeth, caused by the patient’s bite or resorption of the tooth in front of it. If extraction of wisdom teeth is ignored and it is growing into the molar in front of it, the patient may get almost like decay but its resorption similar to the resorption you get when permanent teeth come under the baby teeth and resorp the roots. Sometimes if you ignore it, you will end up losing multiple teeth: the wisdom tooth and the one in front of it, and then the one above it because it doesn’t have a tooth to function against. For these reasons, extraction of wisdom teeth is an important thing to evaluate at an early stage.