• Jirawan Jirakijja
• Boonyarith Sa-ardaium
• Sutha Phattharasupharerk

Objective  To study the types and prevalence of medical emergencies occurring in dental practices. The evidence-based data may provide a guidance in which emergencies the dentists should be competent to manage and may contribute to improvement in undergraduate training in the field of emergency care.

Materials and methods  The descriptive study was conducted by forwarding questionnaires to a sample of 4,000 dentists randomly selected from the Thai Dental Association’s registry. The period of this postal survey was from January to February 2005.

Results  The were 464 returns, a response rate of 11.6%. The most frequently reported emergency was fainting or syncope (16.16 case per a dentist’s practicing lifetime) followed by hyperventilation (3.53), severe hypertension (2.99), hypoglycemia (1.44), adverse reactions to local anesthetics (1.14), angina (0.55) and seizure (0.42). Around half of dentists believed that they would be able to use a bag-valve-mask device or AMBU. Only 29.1%  felt competent to give adrenalin injection. Nearly 80% of dentists felt unable to diagnose the causes of emergencies. Meanwhile, 36.2% felt competent to undertake initial treatment of medical emergencies.

Conclusion  Syncope was the most commonly experienced emergency. The overall incidence of other medical emergencies (excluding syncope) was 10.7 events in a practicing lifetime. The majority of dentists felt unable to diagnose the cause of an emergency, to give emergency drugs and to perform basic life support.

(CU Dent J. 2006;29:171-182)