Bringing your child to the dentist can be an experience that is filled with dread. Ideally, we want to provide your child with an experience that is both fun filled and educational. But when we need to numb the tooth that is requiring some treatment, both the operator and the parent wish heavily for it to be as stress free for the child patient as possible. In order to achieve this, some anti-anxiety therapies can be employed.

These include the use of Penthrox (the green whistle) and relative analgesia (laughing gas). Both of these therapies help to heavily alter the overall mental state of the child. Having a calm patient benefits all involved and may even promote an amnesic effect and our child patient may even forget the part about the injection! The green whistle isn’t as long acting as the laughing gas and this can be helpful for the older child or when we wish to sedate for just the numbing part of the appointment.