You might hear about people being afraid of the dentist, and they kind of giggle or joke about it because while the fear is real, it is also easily overcome. For others, maybe for you, the fear is not easily overcome. In fact, you might be wondering if you can ever hope to overcome it. Fear about coming to the dentist is fairly common, but a true phobia is something more rare. If you or someone you love has a dental phobia, we are the dental office for you. We even have patients driving hours to come to our office because of the services we are able to provide.
Dental phobia is the most severe form of dental anxiety/fear. Someone with dental phobia might have a panic attack at the thought of going to the dentist. Even picking up the phone for an appointment would be next to impossible for this person. You might be asking yourself how this person is going to get to the dental office if they can’t even pick up the phone to call. There’s no guarantee that they will make it, but if they do, we will be able to get their dental work complete.
Defeating Terror
For someone with a severe phobia, we don’t have much hope of making the dental office their favorite place. What we do know is that we are a safe place for these patients to get dental work because we have a very short wait time, and we are the only dentist in Southern Indiana with this variety of sedation options. Someone with dental phobia would definitely need strong sedation, maybe even sleep sedation. We can get that going within minutes so that the worry time is minimal. When the patient wakes up, he or she will have no memory of the exam or procedure.
The deep, underlying problem with dental phobia is that someone could potentially lose their smile completely. They could be so afraid of the procedure, that they refuse to get the work done. We have the solution in sleep sedation, but the patient has to make it to our office. If you or a loved one is in this situation, please pick up the phone and speak to one of our genuinely kind staff members about what is going on. Don’t let this phobia keep you from having an amazing smile! We hope to see you soon!
