Wouldn't you love to have a pain-free dental office? There's nothing more terrifying to a patient than having dental pain. By following these eight simple steps, you can decrease pain significantly so that 99% of your patients have no pain post surgically. 

• #1: Give pre and post-operative instructions at the same time so a patient knows what to expect.
• #2: Consider sedation. 
• #3: Consider non-steroidal anti-inflammatories or Tylenol an hour before treatment.
• #4: Consider giving a patient arnica before treatment and giving arnica cream to take it home.
• #5: Use a gentle surgical technique.
• #6: Give long-acting local anesthetics such as Marcaine before the patient leaves the office so they're not in pain for four to 6 hours.
• #7: Give them a dosing schedule to take the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory or Tylenol every 4 hours, even though they're numb and not in pain to decrease prostaglandins formation. 
• #8: Use ice. Give the patient your home phone number so they can call you. Call the patient at night of surgery and call them the next day. You'll significantly decrease pain by probably 99% percent.

Most of my patients have no pain post-surgery, even though we do major surgical procedures because we follow these eight simple steps and you get to be the gift to your patients. 

Have a great day, everybody, and please try to be pain-free as a dentist.