Sedation of anxious children undergoing dental treatment

Matharu L, Ashley PF

Published Online:

October 8, 2008

Fear of the dentist or behaviour management problems can result in a child's tooth decay going untreated. Behavioural techniques play an important role in managing anxiety, however, some children still find it difficult to tolerate dental treatment and may require sedation. This review examined the effectiveness of drugs that sedate a child whilst keeping them conscious. Due to the poor quality of the research, the review was unable to determine which drugs or methods of sedation are the best for managing a child's anxiety or behaviour.

Abstract (click to read)

Background:

Anxiety about dental treatment or behaviour management problems can be a barrier to its uptake in children. Sedation can be used to relieve anxiety and manage behaviour, unfortunately it is difficult to determine from published research which agents, dosages and techniques are effective.

Objectives:

To evaluate the relative efficacy of the various conscious sedation techniques and dosages for behaviour management in paediatric dentistry.

Search strategy:

Computerised: MEDLINE, PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Dissertation Abstracts, SIGLE, the World Wide Web (Google) and the Community of Science Database were searched for relevant trials and references up to December 2004. Reference lists from relevant articles were scanned and the authors contacted to identify trials and obtain additional information. There were no language restrictions. Trials pre-1966 were not searched.

Selection criteria:

Studies were selected if they met the following criteria: randomised controlled trials of conscious sedation comparing two or more drugs/techniques/placebo undertaken by the dentist or one of the dental team in anxious children up to 16 years of age.

Data collection and analysis:

Information regarding methods, participants, interventions and outcome measures and results were independently extracted, in duplicate, by two authors. Authors of trials were contacted for details of randomisation and withdrawals and a quality assessment was carried out not using any formal scoring system. The Cochrane Collaboration statistical guidelines were followed.

Main results:

Sixty-one studies were included with 3246 subjects in total. Overall quality of studies was found to be disappointing with poor reporting often the main problem. Data reported could not be easily aggregated into groups to facilitate description of results. Meta-analysis of the available data was also not possible for the same reason. The variety of differing drug regimens compared made it difficult to isolate groups of studies that were sufficiently similar in design to allow sensible comparison. Where groups of studies could be isolated, then the differing outcome measures used made their meta-analysis impossible.

Authors' conclusions:

Review authors were not able to reach any definitive conclusion on which was the most effective drug or method of sedation used for anxious children. A list of proposed areas of study was described.

This record should be cited as:

Matharu L, Ashley PF. Sedation of anxious children undergoing dental treatment. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2006, Issue 1. Art. No.: CD003877. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD003877.pub3

Assessed as up to date:

November 15, 2005

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Primary Review Group:

Oral Health Group

Health topics:

Dentistry & oral health > Dental anxiety

Demographic:

Children

Cochrane group topics:

Oral Health > ORAL HEALTH > Dental anxiety