Painless Injections

Yes, there is a needle, and yes it does have to go through your tissues, however over the many years of practice Graham has worked out a systematic approach to doing local anesthetic injections that works. Hardly a day goes by in Jervois Dental without someone saying ‘I didn’t feel anything at all’ or ‘that was amazing, I didn’t even know you had done it’.

Graham’s favourite is when the patient keeps talking while he is doing the injection, oblivious to what is happening!

With the use of a good topical anesthetic paste that is left on the injection site for at least 1 minute, then using anesthetic that has been warmed up first, so there is no thermal irritation Graham then uses a jiggling action with his finger adjacent to the injection site. This has a distraction effect for the patient, and there is a scientific basis to this decreasing the awareness of the injection, it's like when we rub our shins if we knock them. The alternative stimulus modifies the way the brain processes what is happening.

The other crucial factor to keep everything painless, is to then inject the anesthetic solution very slowly. This then causes little or no discomfort to the tissues from the pressure of the fluid being introduced.

Modern Local anesthetic agents are now also much more potent and effective. They produce profound numbness very quickly.

We still hear people saying that in the past, the injection hurts more than the drilling, or that they had the injection, and it didn’t work anyway. These situations are now ancient history ,and simply just not true.

If you are ever feeling pain while we are working on you, we will stop immediately and remedy the situation.

It is very rare that anyone has to endure painful dentistry when good techniques are used.