Dental treatment under general anesthesia: a useful procedure in the third millennium? (l).

Advances in medical science have increasingly extended human life expectancy, thereby increasing the number of risk patients who require dental treatment under conditions of maximum safety. On the other hand, a part of the population presents physical or mental impairments which preclude minimum cooperation with the dental professional to ensure treatment with the necessary guarantees. Dentists and stomatologists must therefore consider the possibility of performing general anesthesia in these special patients, as the only way to ensure adequate dental treatment.