FAQ

Anesthesia is used to help keep children still for dental procedures. Young children, children with developmental delays, uncooperative children, and long or painful procedures where a child would unlikely be able to hold still are indications for anesthesia. 

I don’t give shots. I have your child breathe medicine through a facemask to go to sleep. A parent or caregiver can be there to help and reassure the child. In cooperative children, it usually takes about a minute or so for them to fall asleep. If a child gets upset, I have the parent help hold and reassure him/her while I turn the medicine up all the way. By doing this, he/she will fall asleep in about 15 seconds. 

This depends on the extent of dental work. Most dentists inject numbing medicine in the areas where they are doing painful work. This usually lasts a couple hours, so your child will have little discomfort initially. I give a couple different pain medications through your child’s IV, including a powerful anti-inflammatory related to ibuprofen. Some anesthesia providers give opioids, medications like Demerol and fentanyl. These medications have the potential to cause respiratory complications, so I do not use them. Tylenol and ibuprofen are adequate enough to control pain from dental work. Your child may have some minor soreness for a day or two, but nothing that should require powerful, prescription pain killers. 

It is very important that you follow the anesthesiologist’s instructions on when to stop eating and drinking before anesthesia. Food or liquids in the stomach could be vomited up and sucked into the lungs. We call this aspiration. Aspiration can be life threatening.

Some older studies, many done on animals, showed that anesthesia may affect brain development in the very young. Newer studies, following babies who have had multiple anesthetics, show that there is very little, if any, discernible long term effects. Occasional, short anesthesia exposures, say for dental procedures, are highly unlikely to cause any such problems. 

Nowadays, there seems to be many different sorts of anesthesia providers. Physician anesthesiologists, MDs and DOs, are the most highly trained “anesthesiologists” and are the only ones who go to medical school to become doctors. Physician anesthesiologists take care of the sickest patients having the most complicated surgeries during their residencies. They do more cases in various healthcare settings than other anesthesia providers. This training and experience help physician anesthesiologists be prepared to handle any problematic circumstance that might occur during your child’s procedure. Dr. Coyle is an MD physician anesthesiologist. 

If you don’t have Denti-Cal, you will be asked to pay for estimated anesthesia services up front. Someone from the anesthesia team will contact you for payment. Arrangements can be made at that time.

Anesthesia for dental procedures is almost never covered by insurance. Denti-Cal is the exception.  If you have Denti-Cal, your dental office will bill the insurance. If you have other insurance, or no insurance, you will have to pay out of pocket, and can be provided a superbill to submit to your insurance, but there is no guarantee they will reimburse you.