Assessment of factors affecting parent’s preference of general anesthesia for performing pedodontic procedures in a university hospital set up

Dental practitioners should use their knowledge and skills and be able to identify and effectively treat dental diseases in children. The child’s and family’s response should be taken into account for providing safe and effective treatment for the paediatric patients. The present study aims to analyse the preference of GA by parents for children under 5 years of age. This retrospective study was conducted among the paediatric dental patients under 5 years of age visiting  Saveetha Dental College and Hospitals. The data of the 154 patients who were indicated for GA procedure were collected. The collected data was statistically analysed using IBM SPSS Software (20.0). The results proved that the majority (72.08%) of the parents did not accept the GA procedure. Parents of 3 year old children were the most accepting (44.2%) of GA procedure. Among gender,parents of female children show a slightly higher percentage of acceptance (51.2%) when compared to the parents of the male children (48.8%). Most common reason for acceptance was parents of children undergoing full mouth rehabilitation procedures(55.8%). Majority of the parents who  accepted the GA procedure were educated (83.7%) which shows that educational qualification plays an important role. Therefore it is important to bring the positive attitude among parents for delivering safe and quality dental treatment.