BACKGROUND: Fear of dental treatment is a very real problem for many people. Very young patients or children that are mentally or physically handicapped have various problems that preclude routine dental treatment in the office and require general anesthesia for extensive dental restoration. In America, outpatient operations are performed in thousands of dental offices annually, but there is no report about outpatient general anesthesia in Korea. METHOD: A review of forty children treated under outpatient general anesthesia for extensive dental treatment between 1994 and 1996 inclusive was carried out to assess the patient selection, anesthetic method, recovery time and complication. RESULTS: The mean age was 8.4 years, and twenty-five percent of the patients were autism. The length of the postoperative observation period before discharge was 3.2 hours, and postoperative fever was major complication. CONCLUSION: For extensive dental treatment in handicapped children, we suggest that outpatient general anesthesia can provide reasonably safe treatment, while reducing its expense and requiring less hospital bed space.