Results
In this clinical trial study 50 patients were randomly allocated into
intervention (n =25) and control (n =25) groups. Fig 1 shows
the flow diagram of patient enrolment. The enrolment started in May
2021. The male/female ratio was 1:1. The mean ± SD ages of the control
and intervention groups were 29.04 ± 9.06 and 28.40 ± 9.32 years,
respectively, with no statistically significantly difference between the
two groups (P = 0.807). The mean ± SD durations of dental
procedure under general anesthesia were 91.8 ± 30.6 and 87.6 ± 38.52
minutes in the control and intervention groups, respectively. The
anesthesia duration between control and intervention groups was not
statistically significantly different (P = 0.670). All 50
patients successfully completed this trial and no missing data were
present for the analysis. No adverse events or unintentional side
effects were observed in the participants.
Table 1 shows the means and standard deviations of different dental
procedures performed in the control and intervention groups. The
procedures included six different types of: scaling and root planing
(SRP), restoration, pulpotomy, root canal therapy (RCT), simple
extraction and surgical extraction of the teeth. No statistically
significantly difference was present between the two groups in any
treatment types or the total of treatments done (P values
presented in Table 1).
Table 2 presents the means and standard deviations of systolic and
diastolic blood pressures before the treatment and with 15-minute
intervals during the treatment. Repeated measures ANOVA was used to
evaluate blood pressure changes during the anesthesia. No statistically
significantly change was observed in the dexmedetomidine group (P=0.942), while statistical difference was observed in the control group
(P =0.001). LSD post-hoc showed statistical difference between 15
and 30 minutes (P = 0.032) and between 45 and 60 minutes
(P = 0.009) during anesthesia in the control group. The diastolic
blood pressure did not significantly change neither in dexmedetomidine
(P = 0.094) nor in the control group (P = 0.277) during
anesthesia.
Regarding recovery duration, a mean ± SD of 85.60 ± 29.52 and 98.0 ±
36.63 minutes was recorded for the control and intervention groups
respectively, which were not significantly different (P = 0.194).
The patients’ agitation scores based on RASS in different time intervals
is presented in Fig 2. The Mann-Whitney test showed that the degree of
postoperative agitation between the control and study groups was
significant at 15 minutes (P = 0.015) and 30 minutes (P =
0.003), while it was not significant at 45 (P = 0.1) or 60
minutes (P = 0.118) in the recovery.