Aesthetic & Restorative Dentistry

Health: Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Spa dentistry: Open up and say ... "ahhh"

By Julia Sommerfeld
Seattle Times staff reporter

It's more unpopular than the front row at the movie theater. Worse even than the airplane seat that won't recline. Second only to the electric chair in the most-dreaded-seat category: The dentist's chair.

Few experiences in life, save for a pelvic exam, feel quite so deliberately uncomfortable. Does that spotlight aimed at your face really need to be so blinding? Is it necessary to use your hyperventilating chest as a storage tray for their picks and pliers? And does it have to smell, well, so much like a dentist's office?

No, no and no, says Dr. Shawn Keller. "There's just no reason for a visit to the dentist to be as bad as all that," says the Redmond dentist, whose office smells like fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies. (He has his staff bake them in the back throughout the day.)

Keller and a number of other dentists, in the Seattle area and across the country, are trying to polish their field's reputation with a little TLC. They're brushing up their pampering skills and enlisting the types of creature comforts you'd expect at a plush day spa. In fact, the trend is called spa dentistry.

As in, that light bothering your eyes? Here's a heated, aromatherapy eye pillow. Bored? Slip on some virtual-reality glasses and watch a movie while you get your teeth cleaned. How about a hot-paraffin hand treatment and a neck massage to distract from that root canal?

This all in the interest of keeping patients happy and loyal and in the hopes they'll tell their friends.

Smell the difference

Turning down dental distress

Even if your dentist doesn't offer massage therapy, your visit doesn't have to be unbearable. The American Dental Association offers the following tips for making a trip to the dentist as comfortable as possible:

Reschedule that lunchtime appointment if it's going to be a mad dash to get there. Choose a time for your visit when you're less likely to be rushed and under stress.
If it's the sound of the drill that jangles your nerves, bring your portable music player and headphones to tune it out.
Tell the dentist and his or her staff about your anxieties so they can adapt the treatment and help put you at ease. They may be able to offer sedation.
The first thing you notice when you walk into Dr. Karen McNeill-O'Connor's office in downtown Redmond is that it doesn't smell like a dentist's office. No eau de antiseptic. Instead, you breathe in a mild vanilla and grapefruit scent courtesy of aromatherapy oils diffused through the air system and candles placed around the clinic.

As you listen to meditative music and wait next to the trickling waterfall wall, your choice of Perrier, mango juice or a Frappuccino is served on a silver platter.

One of her bevy of attractive, pearly toothed assistants gauges your taste for the froufrou and, if you're game, tucks you under a fuzzy blanket and props your neck and back with heated lavender-filled pillows. Then you dip your hands into a tub of molten paraffin and place them in warm lavender-scented mittens for a skin-softening treatment.

You can rest your eyes under a lavender (yes, lavender, again - for the soothing aroma) eye mask or watch a movie through virtual-reality glasses. Oh, then they do dentistry. ... OK, back to the fun part. Once you're done, they remove the hand wax with a mini-hand massage and drape your face with a lemon-infused cloth.

McNeill-O'Connor has instructed her staff to tread lightly with male patients because she doesn't want to scare them off. "But men really like the virtual-reality movies."

"This isn't just bells and whistles," she says. "Getting patients to relax and decreasing their anxiety makes the anesthetic work better, and they feel less pain."

For patients with anxieties about the dentist, a little pampering can go a long way. Traumatized by an hourlong bout under another dentist's drill a decade ago, Michele Abrams of Kenmore became a bit of a dentophobe. She'd lose sleep at the prospect of a dental appointment, until she was introduced to McNeill-O'Connor's softer touch.

"The nice touches - the aromatherapy, the warm paraffin, the spalike atmosphere - they honestly make a difference. It's a diversion from what's going on in my mouth," she says.

"For me it's nothing shy of amazing to know that I have an upcoming procedure - two porcelain overlays later this summer - and am not feeling overwhelmed with dread. I know I'll be pampered, and that takes the edge off."

Massage, DVDs and limos

Other area dentists offer an array of perks. Dr. Robert Berman, who practices general and cosmetic dentistry on First Hill in Seattle, offers a complimentary 15-minute seated massage from his assistant, who is also a licensed massage therapist. "The massage helps the anesthetic to dissipate so when patients leave they feel good," he says.

Dr. Keller's office - in addition to giving out fresh-baked cookies (which sure beat sugar-free candy) - has flat-screen TVs above each dental chair, and they'll rent your favorite DVD for long procedures. He also gives new patients free teeth-whitening trays and bleaching gel - about a $500 value.

Dr. Rhys Spoor, a downtown Seattle cosmetic dentist, has a lineup of niceties similar to McNeill-O'Connor's and for out-of-town patients he offers a concierge service, including arranging hotel and dining accommodations and limo rides to the airport.

No one has collected figures on how many dental offices are offering such five-star treatment. But in response to spa dentistry's growing popularity, the American Dental Association held a course on creating a patient "comfort zone" at their last annual conference. And a few months ago, at the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry's conference in Vancouver, B.C., alongside exhibitors displaying porcelain veneers and whitening systems was a paraffin hand-wax distributor.

Dr. Mark Walker, president of the Washington State Dental Association, says the association has no official stance on such extras as long as they don't interfere with the delivery of dental care. Comforts such as blankets, headphones and TVs are fairly standard in area dental practices, but he doesn't predict most dentists will take the spa route.

The trend is an outgrowth of the increasing popularity of cosmetic dentistry - procedures such as teeth whitening and smile-perfecting veneers. Dentists are eager to find ways to appeal to such patients who are willing to pay out of pocket for pricey, elective procedures.

"In cosmetic dentistry, you see appearance-oriented people who are used to being at spas, so they are very receptive to this," Spoor says.

While the luxe amenities are gratis, they generally find a home at more high-end dentists. For instance, though Keller and McNeill-O'Connor both do general as well as cosmetic dentistry and take insurance, few insurance companies will cover the full cost of the more high-end materials they use - for instance, porcelain inlays instead of silver fillings.

The cost of things like cookies, DVDs and cozy blankets are more than paid for with patient retention and referrals, says Keller. "Once people come here, we know they are going to love us, and we've had so much word-of-mouth from this that we save a lot of money on marketing," he says. In the year after McNeill-O'Connor revamped her practice into a spalike sanctuary, her profits went up 140 percent.

Spa idea that flopped

Bellevue dentist Dr. Mark DiRe thought he would take spa dentistry to the next level by offering teeth bleaching at the posh Jeremy Todd Wellness Spa & Salon at the Fairmont Hotel. "Our concept was that we couldn't duplicate the comfort and environment of a spa in a dental office so it would make sense to do a cosmetic service like bleaching in a spa," he says. But after his dental technician sat around the spa with hardly any bites, he pulled her back to his office and is now offering the spa service on a more limited basis. "We kind of struck out," he says.

Turns out that while Seattleites welcome a slice of the spa in their dentist's office, the last person they want to see at their spa is the dentist.

Julia Sommerfeld: 206.682.8200 or jsommerfeld@seattletimes.com

Dr Rhys Spoor DDS Aesthetic & Restorative Dentistry - Providing services in cosmetic dentistry to the area of Seattle, Washington.