Postoperative complications of pediatric dental general anesthesia procedure provided in Jeddah hospitals, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Background: Review of post-operative morbidity reports for pediatric dental care under general anesthesia (GA) show great variations. Until now, no morbidity data has been available to estimate the safety of pediatric patients under GA for dental rehabilitation in Saudi Arabia. The purposes of this study were to (1) investigate post-operative complications associated with dental care under GA and (2) correlate morbidity reports with patient's characteristics, dental procedures, and hospital protocol.

Comparative study of postoperative morbidity in dental treatment under general anesthesia in pediatric patients with and without an underlying disease

“…The postoperative complications studied decreased in severity and frequency over the 72 h of the study, both in ASA I patients and in ASA II‐III patients, without significant differences between the groups. There was a high presence of one or more complications at 24 h, equaling 85.7% in ASA I patients and 85.7% in ASA II‐III patients, which is similar to other authors who found it to be 98.8%, irrespective of ASA.…”

“…There are few scientific publications on postoperative morbidity following GA. The one publication that exists is quite varied in terms of recording the different signs and symptoms, making the data analysis confusing due to the many variables 10 . Children undergoing dental rehabilitations under general anesthesia commonly experience postoperative symptoms such as pain, agitation, need for analgesics, and sleepiness.…”

Postoperative Pain in Children After Dentistry Under General Anesthesia

“…33 The early hours exhibit the most pain. Moderate-to-severe pain appears to peak at 2 hours, then reduces in intensity over the 3-day period, a trend which is consistent in morbidity studies focusing on pediatric dental surgery under GA. 18,19,22 The prevalence of 42.3% by PPPM scores was highest at home arrival. However, interpretability of this score at this period is difficult because some of the PPPM items required a longer duration of observation.…”

“…13,14,16 In the study by Atan et al, 13 postoperative pain was reported in 74% of children aged 6 to 16 years following dental treatment under intubated GA. Of the morbidity measures reported, pain had the longest duration in comparison to sleepiness, weakness, and nausea. Farsi et al 18 determined that the prevalence of postoperative pain was 47.8% at 36 hours and 16.7% at 72 hours. The pilot study by Fung et al 15 found that 57.5% of 40 children who had 1 or more extractions under GA had postoperative pain immediately after treatment.…”

“…Our literature review identified 6 publications that studied morbidity following pediatric dental rehabilitation under GA 1,9,13,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] and 4 studies that focused on postoperative pain as their primary outcome. 15,19,22,23 While collective interpretation of these previous studies was difficult with the variability in age, demographics, and implemented pain assessment tools, postoperative pain remained the most common and long-lasting morbidity after pediatric dental rehabilitation.…”