The Specialty Consultation Visit

While Dr Hill is the primary dental care provider to many of the patients in our practice, your child may have been referred to Dr Hill, a Pediatric Dental Specialist, by your family practitioner or general dentist. Often times this referral is for Dr Hill to perform treatment or to give an opinion on some problem or question to which the referring doctor is either not specially trained or is not fully comfortable doing.

When you are referred to our office, this first visit is known as a Specialty Consultation. At this visit, no treatment other than a review of medical and dental history, an oral examination and, perhaps, X-rays will be taken if required. You will be given an appointment for treatment, a treatment plan for your child and many forms with detailed explanations of the treatment your child needs.

This visit is extremely important and we need to meet your child and evaluate them.

While we understand that this is an extra visit, we feel that it is in the best interest of your child. At this visit, we can review all treatment needs with you and schedule the next appointment(s) at the appropriate time of day. For example, your child may need to be the first patient of the day or perhaps be on an empty stomach in order to the complete the appropriate treatment.

At this consultation appointment, we will also give you all the information that you will need pertaining to office policies and finances.

While we understand that you are busy and that you want to get your child’s treatment started as soon as possible, this Specialty Consultation is essential for many reasons:

We need to determine what kind of treatment is needed. The work for which your child was referred to us is NOT always the treatment that we recommend after we review the history, clinical examination and evaluate the X-rays. In many situations, the referring dentist was unable to obtain X-rays because they did not have the training or the small equipment needed to take the X-rays on your child. We use this visit to attempt to get these X-rays and other diagnostic methods.

We need to meet your child so that we can decide which method of treatment is best suited for them. There is no “cook book recipe” for treating children. We must evaluate your child’s behavior and ability to follow directions. Based on their medical history, work needed, and ability to cooperate while in the dental chair, we need to develop a treatment plan that is based on their particular needs. Children are all individuals with individual needs and we cannot treat them until we meet them and assess them specifically.

There are many options that we can use to treat children at different ages and with different treatment needs.

Some of our patients will simply hop up into the dental chair and open their mouths.
Others are a little nervous and may need the use of Nitrous Oxide Analgesia, commonly known as “laughing gas” or “happy air” to help them relax. Nitrous Oxide does not put your child to sleep and we will explain to you and your child how it works and what to expect. We will also recommend that your child not eat or drink for 2 hours prior to their next appointment if using Nitrous Oxide.

In other situations, we may recommend the use of conscious sedation using oral medicines which will be administered in our office. Conscious sedation patients must have an excellent medical history in order to be candidates for this type of procedure. They must be cold and cough free and we must evaluate them prior to administering the oral sedative the morning of the procedure. Oral sedations are done during the first morning appointment and your child must also not eat or drink the morning of this appointment.

In other situations, we will take some children including those patients with special needs, to the hospital or surgery center operating room and perform all dental treatment under general anesthesia as an outpatient. In these cases, we will have an anesthesiologist administer the general anesthesia and while the patient is asleep, we complete all dental procedures including X-rays, cleaning, fillings, sealants, extractions, crowns, pulpal procedures, space maintainers, impressions and any other necessary dental procedures. Once the dental treatment is completed, the patient will be transported to the recovery area for observation and will be released upon permission of the anesthesia department or post anesthesia care unit.

As you can see, there is much that Dr Hill will need to evaluate during your child’s consultation visit to make sure that our treatment meets your child’s needs.

We hope that you understand why it is so important that we have this initial consultation visit. We want your child’s treatment to be tailored to their needs. We find that this makes for the best success and experience that we can give.