Medical Emergencies

February 17th, 2009 by Mark Mutschler

Our continuing education class on medical emergencies was held by the Clackamas Dental Society in Wilsonville, Oregon.  This class covered all the most common emergencies that dentists in Portland and Oregon City might see in their offices.  

The most common problem is fainting, followed by hyperventilation due to anxiety and fear.  Pediatric dentists are probably the best trained dentists to reduce fear of dentistry but we still have some hyperventilating kids; luckily not to the point of medical emergencies though.

Luckily, as pediatric dentists we see kids that are almost all extremely healthy so we do not have to worry much about heart attacks and strokes.  What we do have to worry about is asthma, aspirating (breathing something into a lung), allergic reactions, and sedation problems.

Sedation problems are the most easily dealt with because we use very safe drugs to sedate kids into a more relaxed state and both our Oregon City and our Portland offices have monitors that tell us if kids are not breathing well enough.  

See our article on Sedation options if you have questions about sedating your children in Portland or Oregon City.