General anesthesia for disabled patients in dental practice

We reviewed the cases of 91 consecutive patients with disabilities who required general anesthesia at a tertiary referral center for dental treatment with a view to determining the factors that create difficulties in the anesthetic management. The more important of these are the special difficulties involved in making preoperative assessments of these patients and the difficulty in establishing monitoring. Other difficulties in anesthesia for these patients involve problems with gaining intravenous access, problems in determining when there has been adequate recovery from anesthesia, and problems in determining the degree of discomfort or pain the patients experience after dental treatment. Another potential hazard in this group of patients is the risk of drug interactions. We emphasize the need to train anesthetists in the care of disabled patients.