Although the majority of the dental surgery procedures and general dental treatments can be done with the only help of local anesthetics, sometimes general anesthesia is strictly necessary in order to carry out long , extensive surgeries, such as orthognatical surgery, or neoplassical surgery.
General anesthesia at the dental office allows to provide a confortable better dental treatment.
|monitoring parameters for a non-deep general anesthesia|
Some countries’ laws require that general anesthesia is carried out in a hospital. In other countries it is a popular method in normal dental offices, where the anesthetist brings his own equipment by the dental chair.
|nasal vs. oral intubation|
Some anesthetist prefer deep anesthesiasessions no longer as 3-4 hours, without local anesthetics.
The anesthetist controlls then oxygen, carbon dioxide curve and uses light amounts of anesthetical to induce sleep but on a superficial level, so that the patient can almost breath by his own, while still beign assisted by artificial respiration.
Oral intubation is quicker and easier for the anesthetist, leaves less soreness, but it leaves less space in the mouth for the dental surgeon to work in. Obviously, the mouth cannot be closed. It mostly used for surgery not needing occlusion references, such as third molar extractions, or neoplassical surgery.
Nasal intubation is slightly more complicated to carry out , can eventually leave some soreness in the nasal mucosa, but, on the other hand, it provides free space for the dental surgeon to work comfortably in the mouth. It is used to carry out orthognatical surgeries, fracture correction surgeries, prosthetical treatments, or extensive cavity restorations involving large occlusal surfaces. In this cases the dental surgeon needs to close the patient’s jaw in order to test the occlusion or to splint both jaws after they are set in the new place. Obviously, this could not be done with an oral intubation technique.