Surgery Center

Every child and every smile is unique. In some cases, your child’s pediatric dentist may recommend that their dental treatment be completed at a surgery center—hospitals and medical facilities equipped to administer general anesthesia. This allows our dental team to safely and comfortably complete treatment while your child rests in a deep sleep, the same kind of sleep a child would experience if he or she were to have ear tubes placed or tonsils removed. For referred patients, a surgery center simply provides optimal support for our dentists to deliver the highest level of care to your child.

Your Kids Care Dental & Orthodontics dentist may recommend general anesthesia for the following:

Infants
Children who are pre-communicative or pre-cooperative
Children who exhibit a high level of apprehension or anxiety
Children with developmental disabilities
Children who have had a prior traumatic dental experience
Children who have extensive dental needs

What are the benefits of doing treatment at a surgery center?

A surgery center provides the safest, most supportive environment for children who need dental care under general anesthesia. At Kids Care Dental & Orthodontics, your child’s well-being always comes first.

Completing treatment in a surgery center allows our team to deliver a calm, non-traumatic experience in a fully controlled setting. During these appointments, our doctors focus on removing decay and infection, restoring healthy teeth, and leaving surfaces that are easy to keep clean at home.

This comprehensive approach gives your child the best chance of maintaining a healthy smile without needing further treatment under general anesthesia.

What if we wait? Aren’t they just baby teeth?

Although baby teeth do eventually fall out, most do so much later than parents think. Children typically begin to lose their lower front baby teeth around age 6 but don’t lose their back teeth until ages 10-12.

The duration, combined with the fact that decay spreads very quickly through baby teeth, makes treating baby teeth in a timely manner critically important. Left untreated the result can be infection, severe pain and decay in adult teeth, and more.

Why should my child be treated at a surgery center?

Since Kids Care Dental & Orthodontics is one of the largest providers of children’s dentistry in the area, we have been able to secure surgery time at many of the area’s leading ambulatory surgery centers and hospitals. They are all accredited state-of-the-art facilities equipped with leading technology. Our doctors are also accredited and trained in the safe administration of dental care under general anesthesia and are joined by a team of licensed anesthesiologists, specially trained nurses, and dental assistants who are all dedicated to delivering the highest level of care to your child.

What other options are there?

Papoosing: A papoose is a form of protective immobilization designed to create a safe treatment environment where movement could result in harm to the patient and/or make treatment impossible. It looks and works much the same as a swaddling blanket. At Kids Care, we do not believe papoosing is appropriate for long and multiple appointments. We believe the child will perceive such experience as traumatic, and the result may be a long-term fear of the dentist. In these instances, we recommend sedation or general anesthesia as a more appropriate treatment option.

Oral Sedatives: Oral sedatives is another mode of behavior management and works well for self-controlled yet very anxious or phobic patients. Sedation of an anxious child who is not necessarily self-controlled is far less predictable. Achieving adequate sedation for these patients requires the dentist to monitor the child’s vital signs and state of sedation in addition to focusing on the highly technical dental work being performed. Also, the unpredictability of absorption and effect of sedation in a child makes reversal of oral sedation that is not going well more challenging. At Kids Care, we have carefully considered the risks and benefits of using oral sedatives. We have elected to not offer the option and encourage the much safer surgery center and general anesthesia solution for our young patients and their families.