Dental general anesthesia: clinical characteristics of 933 patients.

To initiate a study on the usefulness of dental treatment with general anesthesia, we investigated clinical characteristics of 933 patients who received total oral rehabilitation using general anesthesia at the Department of Restorative and Pediatric Dentistry of the University Hospital Leuven, Belgium. The median age of the patients was 10 years. The overall male-to-female ratio was 53 to 47. The principal indications for treatment using general anesthesia were rampant caries, fear, and a mental or physical handicap. The mean number of decayed teeth was 10.9 (sd 4.9). Nearly 50 percent of the patients were referred by a dentist.