Treatments
Dental Anxiety or Dental Phobia
Even the longest way begins with a first step. So take courage, make an appointment and communicate quite openly what moves you. Your fear-free and relaxed dental treatment can begin. The goal: beautiful and healthy teeth is not far away.
What is dental anxiety and dental phobia?
You are not alone:
It is estimated that 60-80% of the general population feel anxiety before they visit a dentist. Up to 20% are considered highly anxious and 5% avoid the visit to the dentist, all together. These 5% suffer from a so-called dental phobia, which has to be distinguished from dental anxiety.
Dental anxiety a more or less strong, uneven feeling during the dental treatment. The patients with anxiety take the dental treatment as unpleasant and menacing and are afraid of it, although it runs pain-free.
Patients with dental phobia, however, suffer from an anxiety disorder, a pathological anxiety, which results in the avoidance of a dentist’s visit, even it is urgently needed.
You can speak openly about your needs and fears, so we can direct the treatment route into the right direction; right from the beginning.
How does the procedure for dental anxiety patients look like?
You are in control!
In our practice in Berlin Charlottenburg your individual anxiety will be taken into consideration. This starts with the first talk, where everything is discussed in a stressless manner.
Only after a detailed discussion and only if you are ready for it, a first eye examination is performed, which may be supplemented by X-ray images.
The most frequent cause of dental anxiety are traumatic and bad experiences in the past. The calm and always painless treatment concept in our dental practice in Charlottenburg ensures that many patients feel much more comfortable and safer from appointment to appointment, and soon nothing keeps us from a successful dental treatment, any longer.
There are many ways to make the dental treatment as comfortable as possible. For example, before a local anesthesia (i.e. a syringe) is applied, the mucous membrane can be anesthetized on the surface with an impregnated cotton pad and thus rendered insensitive, so that the following local anaesthetic is hardly noticeable.
If you feel that these procedures are not sufficient, the treatment can be supported with sedation dentistry with laughing gas or even general anesthesia.
What does the statutory health insurance cover?
The statutory health insurance companies in Germany cover the costs for a full anesthesia only if it is medically necessary. The need for a dental treatment under full anesthesia is acknowledged for the following group of people:Children under 12 years of age who can not undergo dental treatment due to a lack of cooperation with the dentist
Patients who may not be treated with local anesthetics for pain relief due to organic diseases or allergies (a specialist must diagnose this)
Patients with a lack of cooperation due to mental disability and/or severe dyskinesia (movement disorder)
Patients who have been diagnosed with severe, medically diagnosed(!) dental phobia (ICD-10 / F40.2)
Nevertheless, in all dental procedures under general anesthesia, the type of remediation also plays a role for the coverage by the statutory health insurance.
The costs for Sedation Dentistry with Nitrous Oxide (Laughing Gas) are NOT covered by the statutory insurance.
To ensure that you are always informed about all incurred costs, you will receive a treatment proposal in advance. To ensure that all patients can afford the necessary treatment, a special financing service is offered by the family practice Dr. Zimny and Dr. Zimny-Schattling.
If you are privately insured or if you have a private dental supplementary insurance, you should submit the treatment propsal to your insurance company before the beginning of the treatment, because the medical costs of a Nitrous Oxide gas sedation or general anesthesia are partly covered by these insurance companies.