Local community Dental Surgeons Maria Ross-Russell and Julia Hallam-Seagrave have been approved to provide training in conscious inhalation sedation in dentistry.

Tracey Cooper, Service Director for Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust explained:  “I am incredibly proud that Dr Ross-Russell and Dr Hallam-Seagrave have been accredited to provide conscious inhalation sedation training by the prestigious Intercollegiate Advisory Committee for Sedation in Dentistry (IACSD).  This is great news for our community-based Dental Healthcare service which provides care to some of the most vulnerable people in our community.”

Dr Ross-Russell, added:  “Patients have a right to expect a high quality service to meet their dental needs and we are proud of the services we provide locally.  Conscious inhalation sedation is an important technique for the delivery of dental care to patients who have significant anxiety.  Being able to provide this training ourselves will have significant advantages, enabling more of our dentists to develop this skill whilst avoiding the cost of external training, and enabling many more patients to be treated using this technique.” 

“Conscious inhalation sedation is a technique in which the use of a drug or drugs produces a state of depression (sedation) of the central nervous system enabling treatment to be carried out, but during which verbal contact with the patient is maintained” continued Dr Hallam-Seagrave.  “For people who have a dental phobia or anxiety it is a highly effective way of providing safe, individualised, high quality dental care. We are delighted to have been accredited to introduce a local training programme across our Cambridgeshire and Peterborough services.”