Efficiency of articaine and lidocaine in infiltration anesthesia

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the latency, duration of pulp and soft tissue anesthesia after vestibular infiltration and painful sensibility after palatine infiltration with Septanest: articaine 4% with adrenaline 1:100.000 (A) and Alphacaine: lidocaine 2% with adrenaline 1:100.000 (L). Methods: A double blind cross-over study was conducted with twenty adult healthy subjects that received randomly in two appointments, at least two weeks apart from each other, an infiltration anesthesia with the solutions in the vestibular and palatine regions of the upper right canine. The efficiency of the anesthesia was verified by application of electric stimulus, Vitallity Scanner Analytic Technology pulp tester. The tooth was tested before the injection to establish its base line response, and each two minutes after the injection until the absence of sensation to the maximal stimulus (latency time). After this period it was tested each 10 minutes till the return to the base threshold level. The painful sensibility by palatine injection was verified by the visual analogue scale. Results: The mean in minutes for latency was A- 2.4±2.68^a; L- 2.3±1.49^a; pulp anesthesia A - 64.6±20.63^a; L - 54.70±21.43^a and soft tissue anesthesia A - 243.40±40.77^a; L - 226.35±27.51^a. The values for visual analogue scale was A - 2.3^a and L - 2.7^a. Data were analyzed by Wilcoxon test (a=0.05). No statistically significant differences were found between the articaine and lidocaine solutions in relation to latency (p=0.80), pulp (p=0.08) and soft tissue (p=0.18) anesthesias and visual analogue scale (p=0.45). Conclusion: Under the conditions of this experiment, it can be concluded that lidocaine and articaine solutions have similar clinic anesthetic efficiency.