ABSTRACT
UNLABELLED: Dental treatment of infants and pre-school children is challenging because of high rate of dental fear General anesthesia is the only option for behavioral control in this age group. In case of minor medical procedure physical restrain is also used often enough aggravating the fear An alternate method for comfortable treatment is monitored conscious sedation (MCS). Standard techniques of monitoring do not always provide accurate determination of stress level in children since the external stress manifestations may appear non-significant and unobtrusive. Computer capillaroscopy (CC) allows real time evaluation of early functional disorders at the microlevel and of anesthesia efficiency in vivo. OBJECTIVE AND METHODS: The research involved 298 children. 256 of them were treated under MCS and 42 constituted reference group treated without MCS. The groups were also divided into subgroups according to age: 0-3 and 3-6 year olds. Therapeutic and surgical treatment features were analyzed separately. MCS was conducted by means of intramuscular injection of midazolam in dosages of 0.1, 0.15, and 0.2 mg per kg. BIS, arterial blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and SpO2 were monitored at 4 stages while the following microcirculation parameters were recorded by CC: density of capillary net, the size of arterial, venous and transitional microcirculation links (ML), linear and volume bloodflow velocity, perfusion balance. The obtained data were statistically processed and analyzed with the use of Statistica Stat Soft 8.0 software. CONCLUSIONS: Children undergoing dental treatment without MCS are affected by stress. The degree of stress in surgical patients was noted to be significantly higher The absence of physiological parameters changes in children treated without MSC is not a proof of the absence of stress. The dose of 0.15 mg per kg is optimal for the comfortable level of MSC. The increase of midazolam-dose over 0.15 mg per kg is not associated with further reduction of stress. The obtained data is true for both age categories.
