Maine dental patients may soon have to submit to EKGs in order to receive some types of sedation.

The State Board of Dental Examiners is considering a rule change that would require dentists to use electrocardiograms to monitor patients under moderate sedation. Moderately sedated patients are awake and can respond to verbal commands but are relaxed and may not be wholly aware of their surroundings. Patients may be sedated intravenously or by taking pills, such as Valium.

Dentists now monitor sedated patients though blood pressure and a pulse oximeter, a device that measures heart rate and oxygen levels in the blood.

Some area dentists call an EKG “overkill.” They fear the heart-rate devices would deter already skittish patients from getting the dental care they need. They worry the required training and equipment would raise the cost of dental care and discourage new dentists from practicing in Maine.

“Which is more dangerous: A lightly sedated patient we’re worrying about putting on an EKG monitor or a person with abscesses that can get into their system and potentially kill them?” asked dentist Robert Limoges, who has been doing conscious sedation for six years and whose Auburn-based Advanced Dentistry caters to anxious patients.

The nine-member state board will hold a public hearing Friday on a host of rule changes, including EKGs for moderate sedation. The board could vote on the change as soon as Oct. 10.

Most of the proposed rule changes bring the state in line with American Dental Association guidelines. The EKG proposal, however, is more stringent than ADA recommendations. Doug Dunbar, spokesman for the board, could not say how members came up with the EKG policy or why it had been proposed.

“All changes were suggested in the interest of public safety,” Dunbar wrote in an e-mail.

No independent agency fully tracks the number of patients who have had problems with moderate sedation, though an ADA spokesman said he knew of several patients who died or suffered brain damage in the past couple of years. Dunbar did not respond to a request for Maine patient figures by Wednesday night.

Although the ADA offers guidelines, states come up with their own rules governing dentists. It could not be determined Wednesday whether any other state requires EKGs for moderately sedated dental patients.

The American Dental Association took no stance on Maine’s proposal to require EKGs.

A spokesman for www.StopThePainInMaine.com, a Web site established to oppose the rule change, asserts that patients would be forced to strip in the dentist’s office and have EKG leads placed on their chest in order to have a cavity filled.

The Web site features photos of a woman about to unhook her bra and a young boy with wires covering his bare chest and legs. Under the boy’s photo, the caption reads, “Did you remember to floss?”

“Either it’s a very purposeful, flagrant misrepresentation of the facts to benefit their position opposing these dental board rules, or it just demonstrates their total ignorance,” said Dr. Joel Weaver, the ADA’s spokesman on anesthesia issues.

Dental EKGs require three leads, one placed on each shoulder and one placed near the ribs or on the patient’s leg or foot. Patients would not be required to take off their clothes.

Still, some dentists say, EKGs are unnecessary. Dover-Foxcroft dentist Daniel Stenke, past president of the Maine Academy of General Dentistry and current spokesman for the group, called moderate sedation “amazingly safe.”

Stenke would like to see the state follow ADA guidelines, which do not require EKGs for such sedation.

The public hearing will begin at 9 a.m. Friday and will be held in the medical board conference room at 161 Capitol St. in Augusta. Written comments will be accepted until Oct. 9. The board may vote on the proposed changes as soon as Oct. 10.