Preparing for Your Child’s Dental Anesthesia
On the Day of Surgery:
• Please watch for a reminder text the day before the procedure with your child’s arrival time and updated eating and drinking instructions. For most children plan on nothing to eat or drink after midnight the night before the procedure. This may change depending on the arrival time.
• Please have them wear something comfortable with short sleeves (they will put stickers on their arms for the monitors).
• Parents or other family members are not allowed in the operating room, not even just for the going to sleep part. On the day that our medical doctors are working in your dentist’s office, that office becomes a hospital and we run it like one for the highest level of safety for our patients. Parents will meet with the anesthesiologist prior to the procedure to review consent and address any questions or concerns.
• Please have car seats and boosters readily available postoperatively. We will escort you and your child to the car. Keep in mind that they will need assistance to get into the car and again once you arrive home.
Waking up after anesthesia:
Children are often unhappy and confused when they are emerging (waking up) from anesthesia. Many times, they are combative, irrational, and inconsolable. This is a normal characteristic of emergence and passes after a short time. Kids also have an overwhelming desire to rub their eyes and touch their faces, especially if they are feeling numbness from local anesthetic. We don’t let the kids have unsupervised access to their eyes and faces because they can injure themselves in their confusion. Again, this does not last very long. By the time your child is ready to be discharged to go home, they will also be capable of touching their eyes and faces without supervision.
Pain and discomfort:
While it is never possible to accurately describe what another person is feeling, it has proven to be true that it’s more accurate to say there is discomfort after pediatric dental procedures than outright pain. That said, even discomfort should be managed in the postoperative patient. At the end of the case, most patients will get a medicine in their IV called Toradol. Toradol is similar to ibuprofen but is given IV and is more effective at pain relief than ibuprofen. As they are in the same class of medicines, postoperative patients should not get ibuprofen for the first 6 hours after the procedure. Instead, you can give Tylenol if there is discomfort, pain or tenderness. After 6 hours, Tylenol or ibuprofen can be used as directed.
Eating and drinking:
Generally, children are not great at being able to put into words that they have an upset stomach. As they get older, they do develop that skill, but younger kids usually are not able to do that. What all kids have, however, is a natural mechanism where they just won’t ask for anything to eat or drink when they have an upset stomach. In order to make best use of this natural mechanism, don’t ask your child if they are hungry or thirsty after you leave the dental office; wait and let them ask you. Some kids will ask for a drink right away and others may not ask for anything for several hours. Wait for them. Then, when they ask for anything, give them water no matter what they are asking for. The water is a test for the stomach. If the water stays down and isn’t bothering them, most of the time nothing else will bother them either. You can then go ahead and gradually start adding all the foods and drinks that you wish to give them.
Activity:
People commonly think of being under anesthesia as “going to sleep”. It’s a useful expression that even anesthesiologists use regularly, but it’s not very accurate. Being under anesthesia is not like sleep because it’s not restful and it’s not refreshing. Patients are tired after anesthesia. Your child may want to even have a nap when they get home. That’s normal and it’s a good thing. Even if they are not interested in having a nap, kids are slow and tired for the rest of the day. After a day of resting and good night’s sleep the next day will have normal energy levels. We also advise that sports and active play be avoided on the day of the procedure because the kids can be a bit less coordinated than usual and are more likely to fall, trip or sustain some other kind of physical injury.