BYE BYE painful injections for dental treatment...! 

Hello friends, today i would like to offer everyone an insight on the comparable and needle free pain control methods in dentistry.

1) Electronically delivered anesthesia (also called trans-cutaneous electrical nerve stimulation [TENS]).

This is an alternative to the shot of anesthesia.

Adhesive pads are placed on the face and a battery-powered device sends electrical impulses to the treatment area to numb it. The patient and the doctor can control the level of stimulation through a hand-held unit.

Another form of electronically delivered anesthesia is called cranial electrotherapy stimulation. Under this technique, electricity is passed into the brain, which causes relaxation.

Again, the patient or doctor controls the intensity of the current, increasing or decreasing it to control the pain as needed.

Advantages:- as soon as the device is switched off, the effect of anesthesia diminishes almost instantly unlike LA.  And the patient is able to drive and resume normal activities immediately following the dental visit unlike sedation or GA.

 

2)LASER drills:- Some dentists are now using lasers to remove decay within a tooth and prepare the surrounding enamel for receipt of the filling. cavity prep. with LASER is painless and thus no need for anesthesia .

=> other methods like performing procedure under:--
3) N2o (laughing gas)
4)oral conscious sedation
are also effective in pain control but have their own merits and demerits.

also some methods which are not yet clinically proven have been advised like => acupressure and acupuncture  hypnosis etc

so as science advances , newer methods of pain control may finally help to remove needle phobia amongst patients and make them seek dental treatments promptly :)