Veterinary dental procedures require general anesthesia — creating anxiety in owners — but modern anesthetic protocols have made dental anesthesia very safe, and fear of anesthesia should not prevent treatment of painful dental disease.
Fear of anesthesia risk is a common reason owners decline dental procedures for pets, resulting in months to years of untreated dental pain. The actual risk of modern veterinary anesthesia for healthy patients is very low — far lower than the ongoing welfare cost of untreated dental disease. Anesthesia-free dental cleaning, marketed as a "safer" alternative, is ineffective — it cleans visible tooth surfaces without addressing subgingival disease, doesn't allow dental radiographs, and requires physical restraint of conscious animals in ways that are stressful and do not allow the thorough examination needed to identify and treat disease. The veterinary consensus is clear: full anesthetic dental assessment and treatment is the welfare-optimal approach. Owner education about actual anesthetic risk versus untreated disease risk is an important welfare intervention.