Dentists and tics?

[ilovedogs]

Has anyone here had a challenge with getting dental work done on their ticcing children? My son has major anxiety about the dentist and ortho and it increases his tics. His eye winking tic really exaggerated his mouth and his hair throwing tic could also get in the way. What do you do for this? He has an ortho consult today and a cleaning scheduled for early May. The last time we went to the dentist was back in October and he wasn't ticcing back then!

Also, b/c of his anxiety they usually have to sedate him(even though last time he was so nervous he threw up the sedation medication so they had to use nitrous) and I wonder how that affects the nervous system and the tics!

Any thoughts?

[Chemar]

hi

I have quite a lot of posts here re anything "toothy" being a major tic trigger for my son

 

when he was younger we had a pediatric dentist who was experienced in working with kids who have neuro issue

 

we decided against orthoDONTICS because of the tic problem and are glad we did...his teeth grew out just fine and all their warnings were proven wrong

[ilovedogs]

hi

I have quite a lot of posts here re anything "toothy" being a major tic trigger for my son

 

when he was younger we had a pediatric dentist who was experienced in working with kids who have neuro issue

 

we decided against orthoDONTICS because of the tic problem and are glad we did...his teeth grew out just fine and all their warnings were proven wrong

Well, I've decided to give the Ortho a try(I think!??). His teeth are really OVERCROWDED and I can see the future(he's got my tooth problems: big teeth and small jaw and mouth). He's got 3 teeth trying to come into one spot on the upper right and the one tooth looks like it could get impacted if we don't move the other teeth out of the way soon! Right now they're recommending the braces on the uppers only. In a year or so we'll see how things look and then try to realign the teeth both uppers and lowers. I'm just trying to take this one step at a time. I would love to pass on the ORTHO but I can see that at some point he's going to need braces to keep from having worse problems as a teen.

I feel like he's cursed to have my teeth! I never even got my wisdom teeth on the bottom. I got my wisdom teeth up top and they pushed all my teeth forward creating more overcrowding...this is after 4 years of braces as a child. Of course, I never got to have palate expanders, etc to really help expand my jaw. Back then it was just traditional braces.

[P_Mom]

I have been cautioned about the dentist, too. Seems in PANDAS cases, dental visits can release bacteria in the blood stream and cause tics, etc. One Mom I spoke too had a daughter contract strep often after going to the dentist, this stopped after she was put on prophylactic Zithromax. I have an appointment with the dentist for my younger son soon, I am a little concerned, but, he should be okay because he is on the Pen VK. I'll let you know......

[ilovedogs]

Well, I don't think ds has PANDAS even though he did tic more when he had strep back in January. AFter 10 days of antibiotics I did not see a decrease or change in the amount of ticcing or type of tics he displayed. My biggest issue is his anxiety at being in that chair. he can't sit there for more than 10 minutes without getting panicky. I do see why they want to do braces and if things go poorly with Phase 1, I can always bail out of phase 2 since phase one is just being used to move his adult molars back. Phase 2 is to align his bite and fix and overbite(which I think he could live with if he had to!).

I just want to avoid impactions or him losing adult teeth unnecesarily.

 

I guess I really wanted to know what some of you experience at the ortho/dentist with kids who tic? How do the dentists work around it? Do the tics interfere with them doing their work?

Thanks,

Bonnie