Dental status assessment of children treated under general anesthesia

Abstract

Children treated under general anesthesia (GA) have a compromised dental status due to the specifics of their contingent. The aim of this article is to assess caries prevalence in a group of children treated under general anesthesia. Subject of monitoring of the clinical research are 396 children divided into three age groups: up to 5 years, between 6 and 12 years and over 12 years. The dental status was examined and registered according to WHO using the dmft/DMFT index. This index is higher in children in the group of children under 5 years (16.59±3.46) compared to 5-12 year old patients (10.66±1.79) and patients over 12 (9.96±1.74). There is a statistically significant difference in the incidence of dental caries between the first and second study groups, as between the first and third groups. The probable cause is the large number of children with early childhood caries (ECC) whose dmft index is the highest. High index values are mostly because of untreated complicated carious lesions. The number of obturated(f) and premature extracted(m) teeth is negligible. This result demonstrates more active cariogenic environment in children treated under general anesthesia. It is probably due to the reduced ability to create proper oral hygiene skills, due to physical disorders or the pain of complicated caries in children with early childhood caries and the need of prophylaxis is obvious.