Does a child with special needs need treatment under General Anesthesia?

The dental treatment of a child with special needs is a challenge because very often the child cannot cooperate. Is the pediatric dentist right in posting such children under general anesthesia, or are there alternatives to be explored before we rush to fill in that hospital admission slip. DCSN asked some leading practioners of Pediatric Dentistry to give us their opinion on the issue. Each of them is given a rating corresponding to their inclination towards 

Chairside management under LA 

or

Management Under GA or Nitrous Oxide 

Prof Dr Usha Mohan Das	Prof Dr PB Sood
Dr Anil Kumar Reddy	Prof Dr Amitha Hegde
Prof Dr MS Muthu	Prof Dr AR Prabhakar
Prof Dr Ponnudurai A	Dr Ashwin Jawdekar
Prof Dr Sashikiran

Our Take

As a site that has been stressing the improtance of prevention, we ideally believe that we should prevent the child from ever requiring operative treatment. However, blissful as this scenario may seem, it is highly unlikely. After taking into consideration the opinions of our experts the editorial team of DCSN recommends that every child must be given a chance to cooperate. We would be failing as pedodontists if we did not attempt to manage the child on the dental chair. We understand that this may not always work, and that invariably a few children will have to be posted under General Anesthesia, but we do not subscribe to the philosophy that a possible failure to manage the child on the chairside is reason enough to defer treatment to the operating theater.

Our Advice to parents is that, you must give your child every right to co-operate on the Dentist's chair before you agree to let the child be placed under general anesthesia.

Dr Sharat Chandra Pani

Editor

DCSN