Scared: GA for 2 yr old

[Dandelionkid]

I don't know exactly why I am posting here. I suppose what I really want is reassurance but I understand if I get the opposite!

My DS is 29 months and is having dental work done this next week for noticeable cavity in molar and loss of enamel on front teeth. I am so worried that anaethesia will kill him! We will be having it done by an actual anesthesiologist in a dental surgery clinic but it just freaks me out. It also freaks me out to adopt a wait and see approach to dental decay. I want him to have a healthy mouth. I worry about abscess formation so close to his brain (upper molar decay currently). Either way seems risky but since dental work is coming up so fast I am scared to death of it. Is it prudent to wait until he gets further decay?

[MCatLvrMom2A&X]

I was in the same position with ds at that age. I did choose to wait because my fear of GA was just to great.

I ended up waiting to long though and ds got an abcess and we had to remove his top 4 teeth.

If I had it to do over I would still wait but I would have been more vigulent and ds wouldnt have lost those teeth.

In all honesty though I do not regret not having him put under at 2yo. My gut was screeming at me that if he went under he would die so I just couldnt do it.

[snuffles]

I could have written your post!! I am going through this right now and it is extremely stressful. My ds is 25 months old and is scheduled to have GA in a couple of weeks. I go back and forth.. some days I want to put off the surgery and choose a "wait and see" approach and some days I want to get the GA over with. It too scares me and I just can't decide what to do. I talked to my dentist about it and her concerns are that his molars (top molars) have deep cavities and could absess and we would have to do emergency surgery under GA anyway.

I'm looking forward to more responses!

[Peony]

We choose to wait a little and see how things went. In a few months (6-7) we had the work done under conscious sedation instead of GA, which I much preferred. At that time, those cavities were not that severe so we could wait a while, once they started increasing in size again then we did the work. Conscious sedation wasn't an option until she was over 3, which she was by the time we did the work.


We faced the same issue again this summer with the same child! She had another 5 cavities and they were refusing to do the work without GA because one of the molars were really bad. How it got that bad when we go in every 6 months is beyond me.... : DD1 was 5.5 this time, and I didn't feel GA should even be an option anymore. We ended up going to my dentist who was able to do all the work in 3 quick appointments. Spacing it out would of never worked several years ago when she was younger, but it did this time and I was thrilled to do it that way instead of the GA.

[Dandelionkid]

Conscious sedation does sound better! Unfortunately- I go on maternity leave in January a few months before DS birthday so I have no benefits for a year. I don't want to wait and then be saddled with a huge bill next year. Last night I had decided not to do it, today I am doing it. SO stressful. Thanks for the responses- it's nice to know I am not alone.

[milkybean]

Why the need for GA? Are there other options?

[Dandelionkid]

Yay- it's over!!!! It went fine. I did some more research on it and found a "best practise" article about pediatric sedation which gave guidelines for safest administration and this clinic seemed to practise all of them. I also found out that conscious sedation can be more dangerous than GA because all the safety nets are not used for lesser sedation (as careful monitoring, airway access-intubation, trained anaesthesiologist etc) and a child can slip easily from light sedation to deep, non-reflexive sedation without knowledge of the dental staff.
What a relief...it is over!

[Carma]

Originally Posted by milkybean

Why the need for GA? Are there other options?

Before I came to live in the US I never had any anesthesia for filling cavities (and I did have cavities in my milk teeth not sure when the first one was filled probably older then 2 years old).
The first time I needed to have a filling replaced in the US I declined the anesthesia and it hurt like h**l. So next time I did accept the shots.
Are US dentists doing things differently? I am seriously wondering.

Carma