Understanding toothache : The pain that drives the patient to an extraction

How many times has it happened in your practice that a patient in severe pain is persisting on an extraction, he won’t listen, get an X-ray and might even blame you that you want to fill your pockets and nothing else?

Even though these allegations are hurtful and pinching in nature, you have to understand the patient psyche behind this. THEY ARE IN IMMENSE PAIN!!

Ignorance is Bliss ……Really?

Ask any dentist how they feel when a patient adamantly gets salvageable teeth extracted. It is more painful for us than them. Patients tend to ignore the dental pain, cover it up with OTC analgesics, making it bad to worse. Then one fine day, a patient enters your office with a dental emergency, swelling the size of an eggplant asking nothing but extraction of that tooth (which in many cases is not the culprit and in most cases can be rescued).

In most cases, we can do an emergency access opening, but the remaining ones, they win over with the extraction.

No pain…. No Dentist!

Some truly educated people think that if nothing in their mouth hurts, they’re fine. High cholesterol doesn’t hurt, either, but it’s a big problem. I honestly think that the general population doesn’t understand that their mouth is part of their body or that’s what they have been conditioned.

Dentistry is not expensive — NEGLECT IS

After a patient’s first appointment, I make a follow-up phone call to see if everything met the patient’s expectations in the first visit. (It is also a step in his new medical practice marketing plan.). I also ask my patient to come back in case they had an issue and also remind them to keep their next follow up appointment.

During the follow up make your patient understand why the decision to get an extraction was not the right choice.

Anxious about the appointment? I have a solution

I tell nervous patients that we can give them the sedative triazolam an hour or so before their appointment — they just need to have someone else drive. It works so well that sometimes they don’t remember the appointment.

Scared patients are like deers: Let them come to you

Patients assume that an extraction is done is the answer to their pain and they do not need to visit their dentist again; Let this not be the scenario, find the reason behind their inflexibility for a single visit extraction. Is it budget? Is it time? Is it a lack of knowledge, lack of trust?

Every reason mentioned above can be resolved easily. As soon as you conquer their fear they subconsciously start trusting you and then consciously.

There are also ways in which a patient can engage in self-help to combat dentophobia. Doing the proper research into finding a dentist that he/she is comfortable with will help reduce anxiety. If the patient feels a sense of trust with the chosen dentist, he/she will find it a bit easier to go to the dentist’s office. If you feel your patient sounds too apprehensive, you can request to meet with the dentist before having work done. Bringing a comforting object to the dental appointment is another mechanism to assist with fear. Stress-balls are great for this because they can be squeezed in times of heightened fear or anxiety. Listening to comforting music in the waiting room or carrying a favorite book can also help ease the patient. Having a support system also helps lessen fear, and bringing a trusted friend or family member to the appointment is another way to reduce anxiety. Before the appointment, a person suffering from dentophobia should try relaxation techniques such as meditation or think positively about the outcome of the appointment.