Concious sedation with nitrous oxide in dental clinics: main indications and safety

Abstract

Anxiety, in an outpatient dental environment, plays a fundamental role in pain and discomfort expectation, resulting in increase of treatment evasion. The groups that present greater difficulty in cooperation are children and special needs patients, with behavioral control and sedation being often necessary. Nevertheless, literature emphasizes that anxiety must be evaluated as a critical stage and its management done not only in patients with elevated anxiety levels, but being crucial on pain control of every dental patient, since higher grades of restlessness equals higher pain perception. It is known that the use of nitrous oxide in conscious sedation proves to be an useful tool on reducing anxiety and enabling comfortable interventions, indicating that it is an alternative to the use of benzodiazepines and general anesthesia. The drug acts on the nervous system, promoting a slight depression of the cerebral cortex and, unlike benzodiazepines, which act at the medulla level, it does not depress the respiratory center. The technique uses sub-anesthetic concentrations of nitrous oxide delivered with oxygen through a nasal mask. Nitrous oxide is poorly soluble and has a rapid onset of action, being therefore associated with a rapid recovery period. The duration of sedation is controlled and the patient can quickly return to normal activities. This paper is a narrative review with the objective of exploring the mechanism of action of this gas, evaluating its indications for use in dental clinic and verifying possible risks and contraindications.

Key-words: Nitrous Oxide; Conscious Sedation; Dental clinics.