[Anxiolysis vs. intravenous conscious sedation during maxillary fracture splinting in local anesthesia]

For the conservative treatment of mandibular fractures with arch bars under local anaesthesia we used two forms of premedication in 140 patients: 1. an analgetic sedation with pethidine 1 mg/kg body weight and promethazine 0.5 mg/kg body weight i.m. (n = 70 cases) 2. an anxiolytic sedation with midazolam 0.05-0.1 mg/kg body weight i.v. (n = 70 cases). The effect of the premedication was measured retrospectively by the mean amount of local anaesthetics used during splinting. It could be noted that the mean consumption of local anaesthetics was significantly lower in the midazolam-group than in the pethidine/promethazine-group. The postoperative subjective assessment of the operation by the patients is better under anxiolytic than under analgetic sedation, too.