Analysis of changes and trends in the use of sedatives in dental sedation using data from the National Health Insurance in Korea

Although dental sedation helps control anxiety and pain, side effects and serious complications related to sedation are gradually increasing. Due to the introduction of new drugs and sedation methods, insurance rates, legal regulations, drugs, and methods used for dental sedation are inevitably changed. In the Republic of Korea, National Health Insurance is applied to all citizens, and this study investigated changes in the use of sedatives using this big data.This study used customized health information data provided by the Healthcare Insurance ReviewAssessment Service of Korea. Among patients with a record of use of at least one of eight types of sedatives for dental sedation between January 2007 and September 2019 were selected; the data of their overall insurance claims for dental treatment were then analyzed.The number of patients who received dental sedation was 786,003, and the number of dental sedation cases was 1,649,688. Inhalational sedation using nitrous oxide (NAccording to our analysis, the use of N