Dental anesthesia Puns

https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/lawsuits-filed-against-arizona-nurse-anesthetist-after-two-dental-deaths

My 11yo Maltipoo is scheduled for one of those in-depth dental cleanings this Saturday. You know, the cleanings that involve use of anesthesia for the exam and x-rays and all that. Well, I am beyond terrified. I can't stop thinking he'll go under anesthesia and never wake up! I've been talking myself in and out of going through with this for a while now but I know this is something important for maintaining his overall health and wellbeing!

He's generally healthy, besides a slightly sensitive stomach and some back issues (degenerative disc), and they're going to run blood tests and such before beginning. But, I think it's obvious that he's my baby and the center of my universe, so I'm so anxious!

Have any of you with not-so-young furbabies gone through a dental cleaning with anesthesia?

Species: cat

Age: 15.5

Sex/Neuter status: yes

Breed: burmese short hair

Body weight: ~6 lbs

History: She has had inadequately controlled triaditis for years but is now on special food and her abdominal/intestinal inflammation and vomiting is resolved (for about 2 years). Hyperthyroid diagnosed 2 years ago, radioiodine therapy 1 year ago. thyroid levels good. kidney function reduced and levels are right at the top of the range. has had a tooth, maybe 2, taken out ~10 years ago. UTI 3 weeks out from the I131 and lost a substantial amount of weight from that. Must have laxative with all food to keep her bowels moving. arthritis in her hips and lower spine.

Clinical signs: small mass, ~1/2"x1/4", front paw. Dental disease progressing.

Duration: mass for about 2.5 years, dental disease progressing much faster since switching to only wet food about a year ago. arthritis about 6 months

Your general location: Pennsylvania, USA

Links to test results, X-rays, vet reports etc:

My cat has a dental cleaning and mass removal scheduled soon which I am extremely nervous about. The conflicting thoughts I have revolve around her steadily deteriorating condition (weight, kidney health, teeth, arthritis, mass) and how i need to fix what i can in a timely manner. I cannot have the old lady be in pain if i can prevent it. But i am so worried that even though she got the go ahead for the surgery (they checked her heart and her slight murmur was gone and everything looked good, and her kidneys were within the acceptable range), her general health is not in a place where she can take it because she's steadily losing weight and kidneys getting worse. i desperately do not want her last experience involving me scared and confused going to a place she hates and surrounded by people she doesnt know.

i dont want her to have to go through this if she's not going to live much longer, but i cant know that. my vet said she could live a few more years. and so i dont want her to be suffering from dental disease in that time as well. what are the numbers like for anesthesia and old cats with technically healthy hearts and kidneys?

thank you for your time

update for anyone following: The sweet old lady made it through just fine. The kidney issues she's dealing with made the time frame for passing the anesthesia and medication through a little longer than normal. Combined with a negative reaction to the pain medicine (inability to sleep), it's taken her until some time last nigh

I have a tooth that has to be pulled on the upper left farthest back—a molar.

I have had nothing but terrible experiences with dentistry.

I have severe anxiety, OCD, Tourette’s, and I barely left the house before the pandemic, and since the pandemic I’ve only left three times: twice for an in-car vaccine and once for a tooth extraction.

Going back farther, there was only one dentist who was ever able to work on me. He tried sedation dentistry on me three times. He was unique in having the actual certification to do sedation—real IV sedation.

It was a very mixed bag.

I was unfortunately put on benzodiazepines when I was 14 and I’m almost 40 so I am tolerant to them and they no longer work for me but I keep taking them as I’ve had seizure like effects when I try to stop.

The dentist said I was the most unusual patient he’s ever worked on in that I had paradoxical effects to all of the sedating medications he tried, where I became more and more agitated with the higher doses. I remember him saying I woulnd’ tmremeber anything, and I just never fell asleep. He belonged to some conference where they discussed anesthesia and even brought me up as a case to discusss.

I know they used Versed, Phenergan, and something else.

By the third time, he realized that Versed itself was the least agitating for me. The others paradoxically increased my agitation.

So, fast forward to when I needed to have a wisdom tooth removed, and I saw the oral surgeon for the consult—well I was supposed to see the oral surgeon. Instead they showed me a VHS tape on how you could die from the procedure and I had to sign a waiver. I was insisting on talking to the oral surgeon to tell him about my previous experiences with anesthesia and how it needed to be just Versed. And they kept assuring me I would see him on the day of the operation and could tell him what I wanted to then.

So on the day of the operation it turned out I could not see him before hand. The assistants said he wanted me totally prepped before he came in. I kept telling them about how the other anesthetic agents made me worse and how I ddi best with just Versed and nothing else. And they said things like, “This ain’t a dentist’s office, you’re going to be asleep.”

In addition they took away all my creature comforts—I’m light and sound sensitive and they made me take off my sunglasses and my ear plugs, and they wouldn’t let my dad stay in the room.

I decided just to trust and went with it and just trusted I wou

She is a senior cat (12 years old) and has had difficulty breathing her whole life because she is an exotic shorthair with barely any nostrils to breathe through. She snorts all the time and often snores loudly when sleeping. I am terrified that she won’t be able to breathe during or more likely after the procedure (I read they put a tube in during). I can’t bare to think of losing her in this way but her teeth are bad I guess from what the vets tell me. She can still eat dry food fine. Anyone have words of wisdom on this? I know the vets would tell me if it’s really that much of a risk, I just have a bad feeling about it. When I adopted her she had been spayed right before I picked her up so I know she’s been put under the past but now she’s older :(

Hi everyone. My son is 3.5 and has hypoplasia. Basically, his molars didn’t develop the hard outer enamel that protects the teeth from decay and cavities. So, he is having 8 crowns put in. Because if his age and wanting to avoid any possible traumatic experience, he will be put under general anesthesia. I know he’s in good hands, but it terrifies me. His dentist assured me that, this will be a one and done procedure and we won’t have to worry about it after this. Obviously his baby teeth will eventually fall out and we can have sealants applied to his adult teeth when they come through, if they’re even affected by this condition. Have any of you ever dealt with anything like this? Thank you for reading.

Hi I was wondering if you can please help me? No one will help answer my questions of spend enough time talking to me and I’m very shy. My vet recommended dental cleaning and a tooth extraction for my cat. She is 11 years old and her blood work came back good. I’m just so worried about the anesthesia, do cats do this often? Will anything bad happen?

I can't tolerate epinephrine in dental anesthesia since my hyperPOTS became severe; the palpitations are unbearable, the tachycardia is crazy, and I feel nauseated for 24 hours afterward. My autonomic specialist agreed that I should not have products with epinephrine. The problem is that I'm not becoming fully numb without it.

I had a root canal this week. It wasn't pleasant, to say the least, and I have to go back in 4 weeks for the second half of the torture. The endodontist told me he doesn't know how he's going to retreat another tooth with a failed root canal because he can't make me numb enough to tolerate it. I am hypersensitive to all opioids that can be given orally, and I had an allergic reaction to valium.

Those of you with the same or a similar problem, what do you do?

Lyrica feels like extended-release laughing gas. At least it does for me.

I've seen people compare Lyrica to weed, but it's not like weed at all. It's much closer to nitrous or something. It's that feeling you get after you wake up from having your wisdom teeth pulled out.

I took just 50mg one time and felt so dissociated that I was almost tripping. I was literally feeling up the walls to check if they were real or not, because I thought I might be in a dream. I expected my hand to pass straight through the wall, like I was wearing augmented reality goggles. Felt super altered.

25mg is not making me dissociate, but it's getting me high as hell. A crazy "I'm altered" feeling and a mild buzz that resembles dental anesthesia. The effect peaked between 2-4 hours, but is taking days to fully wear off.

Is this normal? Perhaps I am hypersensitive to Lyrica? Do most people react this way? I can't imagine doctors prescribing this shit for people to take home.

Hi,

I'm 27 years old male having benign PVC/PACs for 5 years already. My heart is structuraly all fine based on multiple tests (echocardiography, stress test, holter monitors). At first my burden was about 3-4k in a day but now I have about 100-200 in a day including couplets and trigeminy. Doctors told me it's fine but I feel all of them like flutter in my stomach, then a pause and then sudden blood flow through my body. That makes me anxious and because of my PVCs I have developed severe anxiety disorder with agoraphobia. So I have not been with dentist for 5 years because of my fears and now I have to visit a dentist because my teeth can't do it anymore. I need to have 4 teeth removed and 5 fixed so I will need a lots of anesthesia. As I Googled they use anesthesic that has ephineprine and as I know ephineprine should be avoided if patient has arrythmia or heart problems. Now I'm feared that it will make my heart race and my PVCs will be worse or I even might die due to arrythmia. Should I tell dentist to use anesthesic without epinephrine or it's fine? How's your dental visits going with PVCs? Have you had dental anesthesia with ephineprine?

My daughter is scheduled to go under general anesthesia next week for some dental work (root canal). This is new to us, so we’ve been really anxious about it. 😢

For those of you whose children have gone under general anesthesia for dental work, do you mind sharing your experiences and/or provide any words of comfort? Hopefully reading through them will help to put my mind at ease. Thanks!

Hello. In the past few months I started going to the dentist again for the first time in about 5 years (yeah, that's bad, but I digress). I had some cavities that needed to get done. When I had my first fillings, they gave me two kinds of numbing agents: one on a toothpick like thing and one in a syringe. I get my dental stuff done and everything seems fine. The next day I'm having bad GI pain(like in my back but not my stomach) but was able to get through it. The day after that, however, my stomach felt like it had been set on fire. I had to go home 2 hours into my shift, which ended my Ironman streak of 2.5 years without calling in lol. The day after that, the pain began to subside, and then I was pretty much back to normal. It crossed my mind that it might have been due to something at the dentist, but I had gotten my second covid shot a few days before that and went through the symptoms from that, so I just assumed I picked up a stomach bug while my immune system was doing its thing.

I will note I had to get some very minor work done (just drilling down a filling that was too high) that did not require anesthesia, and I was fine.

This brings us to Monday. I went to get some other fillings done, and they again used the two types of anesthesia. I think they used more of the stuff in the syringe this time cuz it didn't wear off for a long while after I got home. The next day, I had very minor GI pain that I couldn't get rid of, then the next day the same symptoms showed up. I had to take a day off work again and I'm almost over it again.

Does anesthesia hurt people's stomachs like this often or is it just me? I can't see what else could be causing it, especially since it only happens when I get numbed for fillings. Is there anyway I can avoid this? I have one more cavity to fill but it's a few days before a vacation I've been planning for a long time and frankly I don't want to deal with it if I'm going to be in this much pain.

Baby tech here. I’ve been working afternoons for a few months, and during the summer I’m going full time so I’ll finally see surgeries. I’ve been partnered with a more experienced tech to help me through it.

A co worker told me to “really watch her” while doing dentals because she will leave the anesthesia turned all the way up the whole time.

I think my real concern is that I’m getting my own dogs teeth cleaned in a few weeks and I want to know what to watch for other than heart rate and respirations? My dog will be probably the first dental we do together so I definitely don’t want her to fuck that up.

How do you guys usually determine how much anesthesia to give? How will I know if she’s giving too much?

Update: I’ve rescheduled my own dog to a day later in the week where we will be staffed and slow enough for me to watch but that girl won’t be doing it 👍

My husband has DLB and had to have some work done in 3 areas of his mouth. They injected lidocaine with epinephrine. He wasn’t in pain and it was a quick procedure.

Since that time, I’ve noticed a step change in his memory and cognition. He woke up at 5 am the other morning to pee and instead, he shaved and got ready for the day. The list of crazy things he has said or done since that appointment is quite long.

He has to have 7 teeth extracted and so he will need more lidocaine.

I think it’s possible he will recover. His doctor says there shouldn’t have been any effect from local anesthesia. However, I’ve read several research papers that include local anesthesia as a risk for a step change in decline.

Also, I read that C/L can create a dry mouth that makes cavities worse.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any suggestions?