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.