MAC Sedation Centre

SEDATION

We do understand that some patients, especially the paediatric patients, may have a severe phobia of visiting the dentist and require extensive dental restoration.They are not able to stay calm to allow the dental surgeon to carry out the procedures properly. Certain adult clients, who need prolonged dental surgeries may also prefer to avoid the psychological stress throughout the whole procedure. In view of this, we are pleased to offer the option of safe specialist MAC Sedation.

Levels of Sedation

Minimal Sedation

During minimal sedation, your patients will feel relaxed, and maintain a certain level of consciousness. They can still respond to questions and follow their physician's instructions.

Moderate Sedation

When receiving moderate sedation, the patients will feel drowsy and may even sleep through most of the time during the procedure, however will still easily awaken by conversation or being touched. They may or may not remember things happened in the procedure room.

Deep Sedation

During deep sedation, your patients will sleep throughout the procedure with little or even no memory. Their breathing become slow, and they might be sleeping until the medications wear off. With deep sedation, oxygen therapy is often given.

General Anaesthesia (GA)

When receiving GA, patients are in a state of loss of consciousness and lack of response to painful stimulation. Assisted ventilation is provided to maintain their normal respiration and cardiac monitoring is implemented.

What is MAC Sedation?

In conjunction with local anaesthesia, monitored anaesthesia care (MAC) is an anaesthetic technique which can achieve the key objectives of general anaesthesia. Monitored anaesthesia care provides advantages of inducing less physiologic disturbance and allowing shorter recovery from sedation when comparing with general anaesthesia. Hence, prolonged clinical procedures is more acceptable to the clients. By using drugs with favourable pharmacokinetic profiles, many out-patient procedures are now performing minor surgical procedures under MAC technique.

Who will administer & monitor MAC sedation?

Anaesthesiologists are doctors who have gone through speciality training on administering anaesthesia on patients. They are responsible for pain relief and monitoring vital functions including respiration, heart rhythm and blood pressure during surgery. After surgery, during the recovery phase, anaesthesiologists will ensure that the patient is comfortably and safely reversed from the sedation. A registered nurse (RN) would present throughout the whole procedure to assist the anaesthesiologist and promote patient’s safety in case of adversed event.

Who can Benefit From MAC Sedation?

• Very young children
• Patients who are not comfortable or phobic visiting dentist
• Patients who cannot bear with the noise or smell generating by dental procedures
• Anyone who has previous bad experience of dental procedures
• Anyone who does not respond well to oral local anaesthetic injections
• Anyone with over-sensitive gag reflex
• Anyone who is afraid of needles being placed in the mouth
• Patients with sensitive teeth
• Patients who prefer to complete dental treatments in single appointment rather than multiple visits
• Patients receiving complex treatments or surgeries
• Patients who have difficulties in maintaining the jaws open for extended period of time

What will you feel?

During MAC sedation

During MAC Sedation, patients will go to sleep just as if it is in general anaesthesia.
However, there will be no need for insertion of breathing tubes or use of ventilators. They will maintain spontaneous respiration on their own. Oxygen will be given to your patient via some simple nasal tube to improve their oxygen level in blood. Although your patients will be asleep, they will still have the “cough reflex” to prevent anything being inhaled to their lungs. This is why MAC sedation is safe to perform on patients in dental centres.

After MAC sedation

Most people are fine. Some patients may have a brief period of being light-headed after the MAC Sedation. Occasionally, your patients may suffer from some sort of discomfort, such as feeling sick, dizzy or shivery, or have general aches and pains. It is extremely rare, but some people can have a temporary blurred vision, drowsiness, sore throat and/or headache.

What are the advantages and benefits?

Having dental treatment under MAC sedation can reduce anxiety and stress, this allows your patients to cope better with future dental treatment. They may feel that the procedure time is very short that only lasted a few minutes, even if it has actually been several hours. Thus, the bad/traumatic experience can be overcome and therefore consulting with dentist for treatment can be stress-free in the future.

What are the disadvantages?

6 hours fasting is needed before the procedure.

What are the risk?

The most common adverse event during MAC is inadequate respiration causing insufficient oxygenation of the blood. The key role of anaesthesiologists in MAC is to guarantee that the patient will be well oxygenated. All necessary equipment and devices for airway management are available in the MAC Sedation Centre.