Dental Suction Interference and Acoustic Respiratory Monitoring.

Objective: Previous studies have reported that the noise generated by dental equipment can interfere with the auscultation of respiratory sounds during sedation. Therefore, this study aimed to identify whether positing the acoustic sensor on the chest or cervical position would be least susceptible to interference from dental suction device noise, a prominent noise noted during respiratory sound monitoring during dental sedation.

Methods: This prospective cohort study was conducted with 30 students. Sound intensity (dB) and frequency (kHz) levels from the dental suction were recorded from the cervical and chest regions under both oral and nasal breathing conditions and analyzed.

Results: The mean intensity of dental suction sounds was significantly lower in the chest region compared with the cervical region, regardless of the breathing condition (P < .001). Furthermore, in the chest region, the mean sound frequency during oral breathing was significantly lower than that during nasal breathing (P < .01).

Conclusions: Our study suggests that monitoring respiratory sounds in the chest region can significantly reduce interference from noise generated by dental suction devices compared with monitoring at the cervical region.