Fifty years of general anesthesia in California oral and maxillofacial surgery.

In summary, the advances of the last half of the 20th century in general anesthesia delivery by oral and maxillofacial surgeons are the following: 1. Oral and maxillofacial surgeons in training are exposed to significantly more hospital general anesthesia training and in addition spent much of their residency training performing general anesthesia on outpatient dental patients undergoing dentoalveolar surgery. Training programs increased from one year to three years, then to four years and finally, many six-year programs were developed that award the MD degree during or following completion of the residency program. 2. Self-evaluation programs were initiated in the late 1960s and evolved into mandatory in-office evaluation by peer practitioners and later into state-regulated evaluation. These programs began in Southern California and spread to encompass the entire United States. 3. Intravenous ultra-fast acting barbiturate office anesthesia became very refined and several combination drug "balanced" techniques developed. 4. Benzodiazepines, first diazepam then midazolam were introduced and gained wide acceptance by the dental profession. 5. New synthetic narcotic agents were introduced, which give the oral surgeon another pain control and anesthesia supplement. The new agents were short acting but very effective for the period necessary to complete most office surgical procedures. Fentanyl is the prototype for these agents. 6. Monitoring devices were incorporated into practice, and currently all oral surgeons use the pulse oximeter, the electrocardiograph, and blood pressure monitoring devices. All of these monitors are required by the California general anesthesia regulations. 7. Propofol, an entirely new type of intravenous agent, was introduced and is used by more than half of oral surgeons reporting in a survey of drugs used in 2003. Propofol may be used by incremental injection or by continuous infusion incorporating an automatic infusion pump. 8. Sevoflurane, a potent inhalation anesthetic that has many properties of an ideal agent - rapid onset, potent, easily delivered by calibrated vaporizers, rapid emergence, infrequent postoperative nausea, and favorable acceptance by almost all patients about to undergo general anesthesia - is gaining acceptance and use by oral and maxillofacial surgeons.