Care for loved-ones with hospice or palliative status for their life can be quite tricky. The hospice patient may have some restrictions regarding their treatments or surgeries. Notably, the staff may not allow methods with a curative form of operations or procedures. For a better perspective, let’s take a look at some examples. If a family member is hoping to get dental surgery soon, they can resort to IV sedation for their dental operation. However, not everyone allows the use of IV sedation since it is outside the scope of hospice care. You may ask your hospice staff if they allow dental treatments with the use of conscious sedation instead.
What Is Conscious Sedation For Dentistry?
Using conscious sedation for dental procedures give a considerable advantage for both patients and doctors. Sedation helps the patient by making them unconscious so that they won’t feel the pain of the surgery. On the other hand, it gives the surgeon more convenient access to the person’s body so that there will be no complications while doing the process. On the other hand, dental operations are mostly using mild anesthesia or local anesthesia for their practice. Most patients that are only getting minor surgeries can have conscious sedation instead. The forms of this sedation can be through laughing gas mask, oral sedation, or other through Intravenous (IV).
Why Do Hospice Patients Still Need Dental Cleaning?
Hygiene for hospice care is still an essential aspect of their life. Just because hospice care is for chronic diseases or terminally ill patients, hygiene is neglected. Since the goal of hospice care is to minimize the pain and suffering of patients, oral health care is still a must. Oral hygiene reduces the symptoms that cause toothache, gum bleeding, and inflammation. Sadly, not many patients get the dental care that they deserve. You may have to do extra care for their teeth at home. Home remedies can be better alternatives instead of regular dental hygiene. That is because many families say that their elderly loved ones are not comfortable with using regular toothbrush anymore. You may want to use natural ingredients for their continued oral health care.
What Does Hospice Care Focus On?
As discussed previously, hospice care focuses on the relaxation and the ease of terminally ill patients before the end of their life. For six months, you must have the optimal care for your loved one. Taking care of hospice patients involve nurses, aids, and additional staff for their physical, emotional, or spiritual needs. However, if you’re planning to get hospice care, you should first get any treatments before this stage. Dental cleaning before hospice stage for individuals is a must. This reason is to maintain less to no oral cavities during the hospice. Ask your hospice staff for the guidelines regarding dental treatments during this period.
What Happens Beyond 6 Months Of Hospice Care?
Many believe that hospice care limits the patient’s life and even hastens death. On the contrary, hospice may also lengthen the person’s terminally ill life. Such may be uncommon cases but are still possible. If a patient goes beyond six months of hospice care, it means that the causes of stress or illnesses were minimized during that time. Although patients may have to stop their hospice support since they were cured beyond the six-months estimation. But, families may still go back to the support once doctors can re-analyze the health situation of the previous hospice patient.
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