Light Conscious Sedation in Patients with Previous Acute Myocardial Infarction Needing Exodontia: An Observational Study

Aim This study evaluated a protocol of light conscious sedation for multimodal analgesia in patients with a clinical history of acute myocardial infarction requiring tooth extraction and to assess postoperative pain by using the quantity intake of acetaminophen as the indicator. Material and methods All 50 patients received preliminary anxiolysis via oral chlordemethyldiazepam administration. After 15 to 20 minutes, only patients reporting they were not fully relaxed received additional intravenous diazepam before tooth extraction. Acetaminophen 1000 mg was suggested as the preferred postoperative analgesic drug. Results The studied patients included 39 women and 11 men with a mean age of 69.4 ± 17.1 years. They were classified according to the American Society of Anesthesiologists Physical Status classification system as follows: 12 patients belonging to class II, 32 patient to class III, and the remaining six to class IV. Based on the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale, six patients were phobic and seven anxious. Nevertheless, intravenous conscious sedation was needed in 23 patients via diazepam. The first day after surgery, 76% of patients took acetaminophen, and 58% took acetaminophen the second day, with a mean two-day total intake of acetaminophen of 1020 ± 789 mg/day. Stratified statistical analysis was performed and revealed that 60.87% of patients receiving intravenous diazepam needed to take acetaminophen on the first day after dental extraction in contrast to the 88.89% of patients who did not receive intravenous diazepam (χ(2) test; P = .021). Conclusions Our data suggest that anxiety related to dental procedures is widespread, although often unmentioned by patients. Moreover, the percentage of patients needing analgesics during the first 24 hours following surgery demonstrated that overall perioperative pain might be controlled by the light conscious sedation protocol for patients with previous acute myocardial infarction proposed in the current study.