Dental Anesthesiology
The main work of our department is to manage the general anesthesia for the maxillofacial surgeries. In addition, we promote the safe and effective patient care during the dental treatments on the handicapped people and the minor surgeries like as an implant surgery, and educate the cardiopulmonary resuscitation. And we also offer the chronic pain control treatments.
| Head | |
| Vice Head | Chiho KUDO |
| Chief of Outpatient Clinic | Chiho KUDO |
| Chief of Inpatient Ward | Hiroharu MAEGAWA |
■The contents of the clinical service
1. General anesthesia
We manage the general anesthesia at the maxillofacial surgeries and the dental treatments for the handicapped people and people who have a severe gag reflex or a dentophobia.
2. Inhalation sedation and intravenous sedation
The patients sometimes feel the anxiety and the fear to the dental treatments and it keeps them away from the dental clinic. The strong gag reflex and the dentophobia are also the serious problems for taking the dental treatments. In these cases, we use the sedation methods to remove the anxiety and the fear from the patients and minimize the memory during the dental treatments. The sedation is valuable for preventing the strong gag reflex as well.The inhalation sedation is provided by the low concentration of the nitrous oxide, and the intravenous sedation is provided by the sedative drugs, for example, propofol and benzodiazepines.
3. The management of the patients who have some diseases
The pain and the stress by the dental treatments sometimes worsen the diseases based on or induce the accidental symptoms. To prevent them, we manage these patients during the treatments by monitoring the blood pressure, heart rate, electrocardiogram and oxygen saturation and preparing for the emergency.
4. The pain medicine clinic
We treat the pain and the paralysis of the orofacial area, including trigeminal neuralgia, temporomandibular joint dysfunction, herpes zoster, facial paralysis, cancer-related pain, glossodynia, neuropathic pain after the tooth extraction. There are many options of the pain control, for example, the nerve block or the infrared light irradiation to the painful area, several drug therapies and eastern medicine treatment. The stellate block procedure is often used for the orofacial pain control treatment by injecting the local anesthetics to the sympathetic ganglion at the neck in order to increase the bloodstream in the face, followed by recovering the symptoms of the pain and the paralysis (see the picture at the right). We aim to assemble an invidualized and comprehensive plan for optimal pain treatment that will allow each person to return to an optimal level of function in personal life.
5. Eastern medicine treatment
The eastern medicine treatment includes the acupuncture , moxa cautery, silver spike point therapy and the herbal medicines. These are available for the orofacial pain and paralysis, temporomandibular joint dysfunction, bad breath, dry mouth, gingivostomatitis and neuropathic pain.
6. First-aid treatment and education of the CPR
Our mission at the Osaka University Dental Hospital is not only the general anesthesia and the pain control treatment but also the first-aid treatment for the emergency occurred in our hospital.
We are BLS (basic life support) or ACLS (advanced cardiovascular life support) providers, and regularly give a course of the cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to the medical staffs at the Osaka University Dental Hospital in order to rise the ability of their first-aid procedures.
