You can be treated under local anaesthetic, inhalation sedation, intravenous sedation or full general anaesthesia. We use the least of those that will work for you.

Your anaesthetic is given by an anaesthesiology and reanimation specialist in a hospital operating theatre, with intensive care, inpatient beds, a 24-hour emergency department and consultants in cardiology, internal medicine, neurology and respiratory medicine in the same building.

If you have a chronic condition — heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, a respiratory illness, a history of stroke, or oncology follow-up — you are the patient most dental clinics prefer to decline. You are the patient we built this for.

If you are frightened, you do not have to be awake for any of it.

And if you need a great deal of work after years away from the dentist, it can usually be done in one session under one anaesthetic.
 

WHEN DO YOU ACTUALLY NEED SEDATION OR A GENERAL ANAESTHETIC?

Most dental treatment does not need either. These are the situations where it changes everything.

You are too frightened to be treated awake. Not mildly nervous — genuinely unable to go through with it. If you have cancelled appointments, sat in a car park and driven home, or had treatment abandoned halfway, this is you.

You have a medical condition that makes dental treatment risky where you are. A heart condition, poorly controlled diabetes, a respiratory illness, a history of heart attack or stroke, a high BMI, or ongoing oncology treatment. Many clinics will not take you, not because you cannot be treated, but because they cannot treat you safely where they are.

You need a lot of work. After years of avoidance, a mouth can need extractions, implants, fillings and gum treatment all at once. Doing that awake, over many visits, is the reason many people never start.

You cannot tolerate treatment physically. A severe gag reflex, difficulty keeping still, difficulty staying in the chair, or a condition that makes long appointments impossible.

Local anaesthetic does not work properly on you. It happens, it is real, and it is one of the most common reasons people give up on dentistry altogether.

You are having surgery that is better done asleep. Zygomatic implants, extensive bone grafting, multiple surgical extractions, or full-arch work in one sitting.

If you recognised yourself in any of those, keep reading. The rest of this page is about what we can do, and about why the place it happens matters more than anything else on it.
 

IF YOU HAVE A CHRONIC CONDITION, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE AFRAID OF DENTAL TREATMENT HERE

This is the reason our dental clinic is inside a general hospital rather than on a high street, and it is the part of this page we would most like you to read.

If you have been bounced between practices, asked for a letter from your GP, treated visibly nervously, or simply refused — you were not being fobbed off. There is a reason, and it is written into professional guidance in Britain as well as in Turkey.

Anaesthetists grade patients by medical fitness using the ASA classification. Under the ASA's own definitions, ASA III is severe systemic disease with real functional limits: poorly controlled diabetes, COPD, a BMI of 40 or over, a history of heart attack or stroke. ASA IV is severe disease that is a constant threat to life — a recent heart attack, ongoing cardiac ischaemia, severe valve disease.

NHS England's own commissioning guide for Special Care Dentistry places "ASA 3 unstable and ASA 4 medical condition i.e. significant risk of medical emergency" at its highest, consultant-led level of care — and names the conditions it has in mind: "Coronary heart disease, respiratory disease, diabetes, hypertension, transient ischaemic attack and liver failure." SDCEP is blunter: "ASA grade IV patients requiring dental sedation should be referred to an appropriate secondary care facility."

Turkish anaesthesia guidance points the same way, limiting sedation by non-anaesthesiologists to minimal and moderate sedation in healthy ASA I patients only. Everyone else is an anaesthesiologist's patient (TARD, 2015).

So here is what that means for you, practically.

Your case is reviewed before treatment by the relevant hospital consultant — a cardiologist, an internist, a respiratory physician — who is a colleague down the corridor, not an outside referral you have to arrange. Your anaesthetic, if you need one, is given by an anaesthesiology and reanimation specialist in the hospital's own operating theatre. There is an intensive care unit, there are inpatient beds, and there is a 24-hour emergency department in the same building.

Nothing has to be improvised, and nobody has to hope.

One honest clarification, because we would rather correct this than exploit it: if you take blood thinners, that alone does not mean you need hospital treatment. UK guidance states explicitly that most anticoagulated patients can be treated safely in primary care. What is true is that extensive work — more than three extractions, surgical extractions, implant or periodontal surgery — needs your INR or dose timing managed and your prescribing doctor consulted, and is far easier to complete in one session in a hospital than across several visits elsewhere. That is capability and convenience, and we are not going to dress it up as a safety requirement.

Send us your diagnosis and your medication list. We will tell you honestly whether we can treat you — and if the right answer is treatment at home where your own medical team is, we will tell you that instead.
 

IF YOU ARE FRIGHTENED OF THE DENTIST, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE AWAKE

You are not unusual, and the numbers are not small.

In the last national dental health survey of England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 12% of adults had extreme dental anxiety on the standard measure — 16.7% of women. 30% were very or extremely anxious about having a tooth drilled, and 28% about the injection (Adult Dental Health Survey, 2009).

And here is the figure that probably describes you: among adults whose last dental visit was more than ten years ago, 24% had extreme dental anxiety — against 9% of those who had been within the year.

Fear and avoidance feed each other. After enough years the thing you are avoiding has grown, which makes it harder to face, which makes you avoid it longer. Most people in that position are not waiting for courage. They are waiting for an option that does not require any.

That option exists here, and you do not have to work your way up to it.

You can be treated under light sedation and stay awake but calm. You can be treated under intravenous sedation and remember almost nothing. Or you can be asleep under a general anaesthetic for the whole thing, in a hospital theatre, and wake up with the work done.

What usually happens when a UK patient asks for this. NHS England's standard says:

 

"Careful consideration of all less restrictive anxiety management techniques, including behavioural therapies and conscious sedation must be undertaken before referring a patient for general anaesthesia."

That is a sound clinical principle and we agree with it — we also start with the lightest option. But in practice it means that for an adult in the UK, anxiety by itself does not qualify you for a general anaesthetic. You are expected to climb a ladder first.

There is also a published finding worth knowing if you are at the severe end. Across 19 randomised trials, nitrous oxide sedation succeeded in 94.9% of cases and 99.9% in adults. But in the three trials where success fell as low as 52 to 67%, the authors attributed the failures to patient selection — specifically, extremely anxious patients for whom the technique was not appropriate (Journal of Dental Anesthesia and Pain Medicine, 2021).

In other words: if light sedation has already been tried on you and did not work, that is a documented pattern, not a personal failing. It is also exactly why the deeper options need to exist somewhere.

Tell us what happens when you try to have treatment. We will plan around it rather than ask you to cope with it.

 

EVERYTHING IN ONE OPERATION

If you have avoided treatment for a long time, you may need a great deal of work — and that in itself is a recognised reason for a general anaesthetic. NHS England lists among its indications that "a large amount of dental treatment is required."

A 2025 British case series shows what that looks like. Five adults aged 25 to 68, each treated in a single general anaesthetic session. Their conditions included Angelman syndrome with epilepsy, autism with self-injurious behaviour, autism with severe dental anxiety alongside a BMI of 60 and sleep apnoea, and autism with swallowing difficulty and atrial fibrillation. Treatment in one session ranged from full-mouth cleaning, extractions and suturing through to full clearance. Other procedures were bundled into the same anaesthetic — eye assessment, blood tests, an ECG, an MRI, vaccinations.

Every patient went home the same day, except the patient with a BMI of 60, who stayed overnight with CPAP support.

That overnight stay is worth pausing on. Somebody needed a bed and monitoring, and there was a bed and monitoring — in the same institution, not a transfer by ambulance to somewhere else.

For a patient who has flown in, this is the practical case: one trip instead of four. One anaesthetic instead of several. One set of travel arrangements, one recovery, one time off work.

To be straight with you about the evidence: there is no published adult data showing that single-session treatment under general anaesthesia produces a better dental result than staged treatment. The case for it is not that it works better — it is that it spares you repeated anaesthetics and repeated attempts at something you find unbearable.

 

WHAT WE OFFER, FROM LIGHTEST TO DEEPEST

We start at the bottom of this list and go no further than we need to. The lighter the technique, the quicker you recover and the sooner you can fly home.

Local anaesthetic alone. For many patients the problem is not pain but anticipation, and that is often solved by time and explanation rather than by drugs.

Inhalation sedation (nitrous oxide and oxygen). Breathed through a nosepiece. You stay awake and in conversation, and it clears quickly. UK guidance treats it as the preferred first-line sedation technique, and adults do not usually need an escort home.

Intravenous sedation. Given through a cannula and titrated to effect. You stay conscious and able to respond, but relaxed, and will usually remember very little. You need a responsible adult to take you back to your hotel and stay with you. Oxygen saturation and blood pressure are monitored throughout.

General anaesthesia. You are asleep, an anaesthesiology and reanimation specialist is responsible for you throughout, and it takes place in a hospital operating theatre with intensive care in the building. This is the right option when sedation has failed or is unsuitable, when the amount of treatment is large, or when your medical history makes it the safer choice.

You are discharged against clinical criteria rather than against the clock: oriented in time, place and person, vital signs stable, pain controlled, bleeding settled, escort present. We are not going to print a number of minutes, because recovery is a condition, not a schedule.

 

WHO ACTUALLY GIVES THE ANAESTHETIC

Sedation and general anaesthesia are administered by an anaesthesiology and reanimation specialist — a medical doctor whose specialty is anaesthesia. Not by the dentist, and not by a nurse.

In Turkey, anaesthesia procedures are carried out under the responsibility of an anaesthesiology and reanimation specialist physician, and the scope of practice of a dentist is defined by law as the teeth, gums and the directly connected oral and jaw tissues (Law no. 1219, Article 29).

The Turkish Society of Anaesthesiology and Reanimation goes further in its guidance: sedation by physicians who are not anaesthesiologists should be limited to minimal and moderate sedation in healthy (ASA I) patients, and in all other cases sedation should be administered by anaesthesiologists (TARD, 2015).

In our case, that specialist is a member of the same hospital as your dentist. Your dentist, your anaesthesiology specialist and the consultant who reviews your medical history are colleagues in one institution, writing in one file.

 

NOW THE PART NOBODY EXPLAINS: WHERE THIS IS ALLOWED TO HAPPEN

Everything above is available to you here. It is not available everywhere, and the reason is written in Turkish regulation.

Turkish dental facilities are regulated by the Regulation on Private Health Institutions Providing Oral and Dental Health Services (Official Gazette no. 31975, 6 October 2022, as amended). Two of its provisions decide this question.

 

Article 8(1)(d): "Diagnostic and treatment procedures to be performed under sedation or general anaesthesia cannot be performed in dentists' surgeries."

 

Article 9(1)(d): "Diagnostic and treatment procedures to be performed under sedation or general anaesthesia cannot be performed in polyclinics."

Read the second one twice, because almost every dental clinic marketing itself to international patients from Istanbul is a polyclinic.

A dentist's surgery has no operating theatre and sedation and general anaesthesia are prohibited there. A dental polyclinic — by far the most common type — is in exactly the same position. An oral and dental health centre is rare and is the first type permitted to anaesthetise you, because an operating theatre is mandatory for it. A dental hospital, of which almost none exist outside the universities, likewise must have one. And a dental unit of a general hospital, which is what we are, has the hospital's theatres, its anaesthesia team, its intensive care unit, its inpatient wards and its consultants across the general specialties.

There is also a lawful route for a clinic that cannot anaesthetise you, and we will tell you about it rather than pretend we are the only option.

 

Article 19(2): "Dentists practising independently in surgeries and polyclinics may, provided they notify the Directorate in writing, carry out diagnostic and treatment procedures requiring general anaesthesia and sedation for their patients at health institutions which have an operating theatre, or at private health institutions outside the scope of this Regulation."

So a dentist whose own clinic is not permitted to anaesthetise you may notify the Provincial Health Directorate and take you to a facility that is. That is legitimate, and if your clinic has done it properly you are in lawful hands. What it means for you is that two institutions are involved rather than one: your dentist and your anaesthetist do not work for the same employer, a review by a cardiologist needs an outside referral rather than a conversation down the corridor, your records sit in two organisations, responsibility in a complication is shared between them, and an overnight stay depends entirely on what the other facility has.

We are not in that position. Our dental clinic is a unit of Özel Florya Hospital and works under the hospital's licence, like any of its other departments.

So ask three questions of any clinic, including this one. Which kind of facility are you? Where exactly will my anaesthetic be given, and what else is in that building? And will my dentist and my anaesthetist be in the same institution?

 

WHAT YOU ARE ACTUALLY RISKING IF IT IS DONE WHERE IT IS NOT ALLOWED

This is the part we would ask you to read most carefully, and we are going to make the argument with the regulation's own equipment list rather than with adjectives.

When Turkish regulation permits a facility to give general anaesthetics, it specifies in detail what that facility must contain. Within a sterile area: an operating theatre, a pre-operative preparation room, and a post-operative recovery room, with patient-side monitoring and a central medical gas system (Article 10). And separately: a generator, plus an uninterruptible power supply for the general anaesthesia unit (Article 10(5)).

That list is not decoration. Each item on it is there because of a specific thing that can go wrong while somebody is unconscious.

Now consider what it means that a dentist's surgery and a polyclinic are prohibited from giving sedation or general anaesthesia. They are prohibited precisely because they do not have those things. So if sedation is given in one anyway, the patient is not simply being treated somewhere unlicensed. The patient is being rendered unconscious without the equipment and the facilities that exist for exactly that situation.

Think about the most ordinary version of that. The power goes out. In a facility built for anaesthesia, the generator and the uninterruptible supply mean the monitor keeps reading, the suction keeps working and the oxygen keeps flowing. In a dental surgery, there is no such requirement, because nobody was ever supposed to be asleep there.

And then there is the distinction that matters most, which almost no patient is told about.

A recovery room is not an intensive care unit. The regulation requires a facility giving general anaesthetics to have a post-operative recovery room with monitoring. Good — that is where you wake up and are watched for a while before you go home. But no dental facility outside a general hospital has an intensive care unit. Not a dentist's surgery, not a polyclinic, not an oral and dental health centre. What they have is a room where a patient rests and is observed, and that has nothing to do with intensive care.

The same is true of a dental hospital. It has operating theatres and it can anaesthetise you entirely lawfully. What it does not have is intensive care, inpatient wards, or a cardiologist, internist, neurologist or respiratory physician in the building. If your blood pressure crashes, or your heart rhythm changes, or your breathing deteriorates, a dental facility has to call somebody. A general hospital already has them.

A recovery room is a room where you wake up. An intensive care unit is where you are kept alive. Outside a general hospital, dental facilities have the first and not the second.

We have both, along with inpatient wards, a 24-hour emergency department and consultants across the general specialties — on the same site, not a phone call away.

 

"DEEP SEDATION" AND "SLEEP DENTISTRY" — THE WORD THAT HIDES THE RISK

If you lose consciousness, it is a general anaesthetic. There is no middle category.

That is not our definition. The Turkish Society of Anaesthesiology and Reanimation sets out four levels, from minimal sedation (normal response to verbal stimulus) through moderate and deep sedation to general anaesthesia: "cannot be roused even by painful stimuli" (TARD, 2015).

British regulation says the same in the language of permission:

 

"Any technique resulting in the loss of consciousness is defined as general anaesthesia." — SDCEP, 2017

 

"'Deep sedation' in which these criteria are not fulfilled must be regarded as general anaesthesia." — Department of Health, 2000

Conscious sedation, by the definition used identically across the UK standards, is a technique "during which verbal contact with the patient is maintained throughout the period of sedation."

Verbal contact maintained. If you cannot be spoken to, you are not sedated — you are anaesthetised, and an anaesthetic has a legally defined place.

So the useful question to put to any clinic is not what they call it. It is: will I be able to respond to you throughout? And if not, where exactly is this happening and who is responsible for me?

 

BRITAIN REACHED THE SAME CONCLUSION IN 2001

If you are reading this from the UK or Ireland, the rule you already live under says the same thing as the Turkish one.

Department of Health, A Conscious Decision (2000):

 

"After 31st December 2001, general anaesthesia for dental treatment should only take place in a hospital setting."

And it defines a hospital setting as an institution "which has critical care facilities on the same site."

Royal College of Anaesthetists, Guidelines for the Provision of Anaesthesia Services, Chapter 7, 2025 edition:

 

"General anaesthesia for dentistry should be administered only by anaesthetists in a hospital setting."

SDCEP (2017): general anaesthesia is "not permitted in the primary dental care setting" in the UK.

Britain did not arrive at this casually. In the summer of 1998 two children died under general anaesthesia in UK dental practices, and dental general anaesthesia outside hospitals was ended as a result.

Two countries, two separate regulators, no coordination between them, and the same answer: not in a dental practice. When regulation in different jurisdictions converges like that, it is usually telling you something real.

There is also a figure worth knowing. A British Dental Journal study collected UK dental general anaesthesia deaths by Freedom of Information request and identified 15 deaths between 2000 and 2018 — about 0.88 per year — against approximately two per year during the 1990s, when dental general anaesthesia was still being given in dental practices (Murphy, Szuster & Richards, 2018). The authors' own caveat is that even these deaths "could not be directly attributed to the DGA as the death was linked with the care episode, not a specific cause." So: the rate more than halved after the setting changed, and the authors would not claim the anaesthetic caused every one of those fifteen. You should have both halves of that.

What does not exist anywhere, and we looked, is a clean published comparison of adverse outcomes between hospital and non-hospital dental anaesthesia. Any clinic quoting you a precise safety comparison between settings is quoting something that has not been published. We have not found Turkish mortality or complication figures for dental anaesthesia either, and we are not going to invent them.

 

WHAT A DENTAL PRACTICE IS DESIGNED TO DO IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG

This is not a criticism of dentists. It is a description of how the system is built, in the words of the people who built it.

Medical emergencies in the dental chair are not rare. A study of 400 UK dental clinicians found that, per clinician, fainting occurred about once every 1.6 years, unexplained collapse about once every 1.6 years, and hypoglycaemia about once every 8 years (British Dental Journal, 2023).

So what is a dental practice required to do when it happens? The Resuscitation Council UK sets the standard:

 

"In the event of cardiorespiratory arrest, emergency services should be summoned immediately by calling 999."

Begin CPR. Attempt defibrillation with an AED within three minutes. And then:

 

"Written documentation containing details of the dental procedure (if any), medical emergency, any treatment given, and the name of the Dental Practitioner should all accompany the patient to hospital."

The required equipment list for a dental practice contains airways, oxygen, a bag-mask and a defibrillator. It contains no resuscitation drugs.

That is the designed response, and it is a sensible one: stabilise the patient and get them to a hospital, where the definitive treatment is. A dentist is not a registered medical practitioner and does not hold specialist registration in cardiology, internal medicine, neurology or respiratory medicine.

A dental practice is built to deliver dentistry safely and to get you to hospital if something goes wrong. We are the hospital.

 

INSURANCE, AND WHAT SITS ON TOP OF IT

Turkish regulation requires it. Under the Regulation on International Health Tourism and Tourist Health (Official Gazette no. 32882, 26 April 2025), Article 6(1)(c): "complication insurance must be taken out by the health facility for surgical and interventional procedures to be performed in an operating theatre environment."

We hold it for every patient. But understand what it is: an insurance policy pays within its own limits and at the insurer's discretion, which leaves you negotiating with a third party at exactly the moment you want certainty.

So we add our own commitment on top of it: a 5-year written guarantee, issued as a signed document in your name with your passport number, on the day your treatment begins.

[ Read Our Guarantee Policy → ]

 

WHAT WE WILL NOT DO

We will not treat you asleep because it is more profitable. General anaesthesia is the most expensive thing on this page and the option with the most to go wrong. If local anaesthetic and a careful appointment will get you through, we will tell you so.

We will not call something "sedation" if you will be unconscious. By definition in both countries that is a general anaesthetic, and we will book it as one, in a theatre, with an anaesthesiology specialist.

We will not compress your treatment into fewer days than your case should take. An anaesthetic does not change how long bone takes to heal or a laboratory takes to work.

We will not take a case we should not take. For some patients the right answer is treatment close to home, where their own medical team is. If you are one of them, we will say so.

 

WHAT IT COSTS

A note on comparison. We looked for an authoritative published UK price for dental treatment under general anaesthesia so we could put it next to ours. There isn't one — even a dedicated private anaesthetic dental clinic publishes its dental item prices and quotes the anaesthetic case by case.

What we can tell you is how the arithmetic differs. UK sedation and anaesthetic charges are quoted per session or per hour, for one procedure. A patient needing extensive work pays that several times over. We plan your treatment as one session and quote you one figure, in writing, before you book a flight.

[ See Our Full Price List → ]

 

QUESTIONS PATIENTS ASK

I have a heart condition and I have been refused dental treatment. Can you treat me? Usually yes, and this is the main reason our dental clinic sits inside a general hospital. Your case is reviewed by the relevant hospital consultant before treatment is scheduled. Send us your diagnosis and medication list and we will tell you honestly whether we can treat you, or whether you are better treated at home.

Can I really have all my dental work done while I am asleep? Yes, in most cases, in a single hospital session. After reviewing your photographs and X-rays we will tell you how much can safely be done in one go.

I am terrified. Do I have to try the lighter options first? We will always offer you the lightest technique that is likely to work, because it is better for you. But if light sedation has been tried on you before and failed, tell us — that is a documented pattern in the research, not a personal failing, and we will plan accordingly.

Who gives the anaesthetic? An anaesthesiology and reanimation specialist from the hospital, in the hospital's own operating theatre, with intensive care in the same building. Not the dentist.

Most clinics in Istanbul advertise sedation. Why do you say they cannot provide it? Under Turkish regulation, sedation and general anaesthesia cannot be carried out in a dentist's surgery or a dental polyclinic, and most dental clinics are polyclinics. There is a lawful route — the dentist notifies the Provincial Health Directorate and takes the patient to a facility that has an operating theatre. That is legitimate. But it means two institutions rather than one, and most clinics do not mention it at all. Ask where yours would happen, who would be responsible, and get the answer in writing.

What is the actual risk if a clinic sedates me somewhere it is not allowed? The regulation requires a facility giving anaesthetics to have a sterile operating theatre, a preparation room, a recovery room, patient monitoring, a central medical gas system, a generator and an uninterruptible power supply. A surgery or polyclinic is prohibited from giving anaesthetics precisely because it does not have those. So you would be unconscious without the equipment that exists for that situation — and without an intensive care unit if something needed one.

They told me they have a recovery room. Is that the same as intensive care? No. A recovery room is where you wake up and are observed for a while. An intensive care unit is where someone is kept alive. No dental facility outside a general hospital has an intensive care unit — including a dental hospital.

I take blood thinners. Do I need to stop them? Usually not. In line with current guidance we would rather manage the bleeding than stop your medication. For extensive surgery the timing of your dose may be adjusted and we may ask for an INR, and we consult your prescribing doctor where needed.

Local anaesthetic has never worked properly on me. Can you help? Yes, and it is a more common problem than people realise. Sedation or general anaesthesia removes the issue entirely, and we would rather hear this before your appointment than during it.

How long before I can fly home? That depends on the treatment and the anaesthetic, and we will give you a date rather than a rule. Nobody is discharged against the clock.

Do I need someone with me? For intravenous sedation and general anaesthesia, yes — a responsible adult to take you back to your hotel and stay with you. For inhalation sedation, adults usually do not.

Will I remember anything? Under general anaesthesia, nothing. Under intravenous sedation, usually very little. Under inhalation sedation you will remember it, but most people describe it as not mattering.

I am autistic / I have a learning disability / I have a severe gag reflex. Can you treat me? These are among the recognised reasons for treating dental patients under general anaesthesia, and they are routinely managed in hospital settings. Tell us what makes treatment difficult and we will plan around it rather than ask you to cope with it.

What if I am frightened of the anaesthetic rather than the dentist? Then say so, and we will go through exactly what will happen, who will be with you, and what the alternatives are. That conversation is part of the treatment, not a preliminary to it.

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TELL US WHAT HAS BEEN STOPPING YOU.

Whether it is fear, a medical condition, or a clinic that has already said no — send us your photographs, your diagnosis and your medication list.

We will tell you what can be done, what level of anaesthesia your case actually needs, and whether you should be treated here or at home.

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