Profound Anesthesia

We worked with a new patient today and she wanted to be sedated.  It seems that she has a hard time getting profoundly numb!!  (No wonder she wants to be sedated.)   If I thought that my mouth was not numb, I would want to be sedated also. We pride ourselves in being able to get people profoundly numb.    I am always surprised when I hear that someone has had dental work done when they are not very numb.  There are a lot of reasons why people don't get really numb, but the failure to react to the anesthetic isn't one of them.  It usually is an anatomical situation (the nerve is not where it is supposed to be!)  We just need to give more anesthetic in different places, and give it time to work. 

We were able to get our patient completely numb, and the procedure went very smoothly.  Who knows, she may not even want to be numb the next time!  However, if she does, that will be no problem; we have plenty of medicine to sedate her.