I have now retired from clinical dentistry treating medically compromised and anxious patients. Many required IV sedation. I started using procedural hypnosis in 1978 and with IV sedation patients we used it to maximise the placebo effect and amplify the drug response. Using this we provided sedation with very minimal or no medication.

Surgical patients treated using procedural hypnosis ( which is NOT hypnotherapy ) tend to bleed less, giving nice clean field to work with; they get less post-op swelling and less post op discomfort. They tend to heal faster. For implant surgery this helped to produce better soft tissue contours. All on 4 same day teeth cases had a massive reduction in the sedation required over the course of the day and therefore a faster more cost effective discharge rate.

I am now teaching these skills to my younger colleagues and I have convinced the British Society for Clinical and Academic Hypnosis to run specific dental courses. It surprises me that Spear does not have an element of this training. In the US, you have David Speigel at the Dept of Integrated Medicine at Standford and Elvira Lang who was Prof of Interventional Radiology at Harvard and now provides training via 'Comfort Talk'. Her research over the last 25 years is published internationally and is shown to improve the cost effectiveness of treatment delivery.

I would like to open a discussion to find out if Spear dentists use hypnosis; and if not, why not? I used it everyday during my career and thought everyone else did as well! It turns out the the popularity seems to have declined over the years and there is an increased reliance on drugs.

Your marketing team uses the 'Yes' set and 'pace;pace lead for marketing so why not do the clinical as well?

I hope I will get some feedback on this post....

John Duthie