An audit into the reasons why treatment was not completed as planned under intravenous sedation in an adult oral surgery department, and the cost implications.

This audit aimed to identify the prevalence of, and reasons for failed intravenous conscious sedation in an adult oral surgery department, to develop recommendations to reduce such failures and to identify any cost implications. Data were collected prospectively for three months for all intravenous sedation appointments in the Oral Surgery department. Data were collected for 109 sedation appointments of which 83 were successful (76%). The failure rate (24%) was higher than the acceptable departmental failure rate (10%), and included reasons for failure that should have been avoided by a thorough patient assessment prior to treatment. Of the 26 failures, the most common reasons for failure were: cancellation: 8 patients (30.8%), failure to attend: 6 patients (23.1%), excessively late arrival of patient: 4 patients (15.4%) and failure to cannulate: 3 patients (11.6%). When sedation was unsuccessful, 13 of the 26 patients (50%) had their treatment successfully completed under local anaesthesia alone, 10 patients (38%) were rebooked for sedation and 3 patient. (12%) were rebooked for a general anaesthetic. Identifying and correcting the reasons for failure can result in vast savings in appointment time, clinical resources and cost. That 13 patients subsequently had their treatment completed under local anaesthesia alone opens the debate on how rigorous the patient assessment and allocation of sedation appointments was, and the potential to achieve savings.

Oral and maxillofacial surgery and chronic painful temporomandibular disorders--a systematic review.

PURPOSE: To provide a systematic review of the best available research literature investigating the relation of oral and maxillofacial surgical procedures to the onset or relief of chronic painful temporomandibular disorder (TMD). MATERIALS AND METHODS: A comprehensive review of the databases CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Embase, Medline, NHS Evidence--Oral Health, PsycINFO, Web of Knowledge, and MetaLib was undertaken by 2 authors (P.S., M.H.) up to June 2009 using search terms appropriate to establishing a relation between orofacial surgical procedures and TMD. The search was restricted to English-language publications. RESULTS: Of the 1,777 titles reviewed, 35 articles were critically appraised but only 32 articles were considered eligible. These were observational studies that fell into 2 groups; 9 were seeking to establish a surgical cause for TMD. Of these, only 2 of a series of 3 claimed that there was a significant link, but this claim was based on weak data (health insurance records) and was abandoned in a subsequent report. Twenty-three studies were seeking to achieve relief by orthognathic surgical intervention. These were also negative overall, with 7 articles showing varying degrees of mostly nonsignificant improvement, whereas 16 showed no change or a worse outcome. No published report on the putative effect of implant insertion was found. CONCLUSION: These apparently contradictory approaches underline a belief that oral surgical trauma or gross malocclusion has a causative role in the onset of TMD. However, there was no overall evidence of a surgical causal etiology or orthognathic therapeutic value. This review emphasizes that it is in the patients' best interest to carry out prospective appropriately controlled randomized trials to clarify the situation.