Dental treatment of children with special needs under general anesthesia at the Clinic of dental medicine in Niš: A ten-year retrospective study

Abstract

Introduction: The oral health of children with special needs is most often impaired, with a high prevalence of caries and its complications. Due to the impossibility of establishing an adequate child-dentist contact and a large number of carious teeth, dental treatment under general anesthesia is often indicated in this population of children. Aim: To perform a comprehensive analysis of the dental treatment of children with special needs under general anesthesia at the Clinic of Dental Medicine in Niš over a period of ten years. Material and methods: A retrospective study analyzed the dental documentation of children with special needs in whom dental treatment was performed under general anesthesia at the Clinic of Dental Medicine in Niš in the period from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2019. Results: 286 children with special needs (14.7%) out of a total number of 1943 admitted at the Department for Preventive and Pediatric Dentistry of the Clinic of Dental Medicne in Niš during the analyzed period, originally from Nišava, Jablanica, Pčinja, Toplica, Rasina, and other administrative districts of Serbia, were treated under general anesthesia. In the second half of the ten-year follow-up period, almost twice as many children were treated regarding the first five years. The records show that 1754 teeth were restored, 28 endodontically treated, and 1417 extracted. Conclusion: A high percentage of children with special needs treated under general anesthesia and a constant increase in the number of such children in Southeastern Serbia suggest the need for close cooperation between dentists of health care centers in Southeastern Serbia and dentists at the Clinic of Dental Medicine in Niš, a tertiary dental health care center towards which patients of this part of Serbia gravitate.

Keywords

• children with special needs
• tooth restoration
• general anesthesia