AN ASSESSMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE DENTAL TREATMENT

There are several categories of dental problems in children that cannot be treated optimally in the office settings and are best managed in the hospital theatre. The ability to treat children in the hospital environment in order to provide comprehensive dental care using general anaesthesia (GA) is a valuable option to the paediatric dentist, despite some degree of risk to the patient. General anaesthesia provides optimum conditions for restorative treatment such as maximum contamination control, immobilization of the patient, efficiency and effectiveness, and elimination of reflexes. In spite of providing optimum conditions for restorative procedures, high restorative failure rates are reported in the literature for treatments provided under GA (Tate et al 2002). Objectives: to determine: the profile of the child patients treated; types of dental procedures performed; the oral health status of the patients post-GA; the status of restorative procedures performed. Methods: Files were randomly selected from the bank of records of child patients treated under general anaesthesia (GA) At Tygerberg Oral Health Centre in 2004..