Eligibility of Patients with Special Needs for General Anesthesia in Dentistry: Clinical Predictors and a Proposed Multidimensional Flowchart

Abstract

Greater dental treatment extent showed an exploratory association with eligibility (OR = 4.21; 95% CI: 0.95–26.23; p = 0.039), but the estimate was imprecise. The model showed an apparent AUC of 0.916 and an optimism-corrected AUC of 0.883 after bootstrap internal validation. Eligibility for dental treatment under GA in PSNs was most strongly associated with systemic risk and behavioral and movement profiles. The proposed flowchart integrates these dimensions, with intellectual disability and extensive/acute dental need as clinical modifiers, and should be regarded as an exploratory framework requiring external validation before clinical implementation.