Background: Conscious sedation is a combination of medicines to help as relax (a sedative) and to block pain (an anesthetic) during a medical or dental procedure. The patient will probably stay awake but may not be able to speak.Anxiety and fear in relation to dentistry are long-standing problems and the incidence of dental fear does not appear to be decreasing. It can result in poor dental health and wastage of clinical time. Conscious sedation is one method of allaying anxiety in dental patients and enables such patients to accept dental treatment.
Aim and Objectives: to assess the levels of dental anxiety in these adults, the impact on their attendance for dental treatment, and their knowledge of and desire to have conscious sedation, should it be available.
Methods and Materials: 100 Dental practitioners from chennai participated in this survey. The questionnaire included 15 questions and the participants responded to the all questions in the questionnaire and there were no dropouts in the study. The data was extracted and analysed.
Results and Conclusion: This study concluded 83% of practitioners had referred patients for sedation. With the reduction in the provision of general anaesthesia, there is a need to train more practitioners to undertake conscious sedation in primary care.