Local anaesthesia - more comfortable with an epinephrine reduced articaine solution?

Methods: In line with a non-interventional clinical study 908 patients were monitored during routine dental treatment (mostly conservative and prosthetic procedures). The following day they were interviewed by telephone for side effects and duration of tissue anaesthesia.

Results: Most common was infiltration anaesthesia (73.13%), followed by block anaesthesia (25.77%) and a combination of both (0.77%). The efficacy of infiltration was superior to block anaesthesia. The effect of anaesthesia was tested before starting treatment and there was no difference in the assessment between dentist and patient. Differences occurred in the evaluation of the second injection (in 35 patients needed) if the first one was insufficient. A second injection after more than 30 min treating time showed tachyphylaxis (n=62). Soft tissue anaesthesia lasted 146.6 + 70.14 min after infiltration and 187.7 + 65.31 min after block anaesthesia. The patients greatly appreciated the shorter duration of tissue anaesthesia. Only few patients needed analgetics for post treatment pain.

Conclusions: The epinephrine reduced articaine solution (1/400 000, 3M ESPE) showed the same pharmacokinetic patterns as preparations with higher concentrations but shorter duration. Patients tend to see this as an advantage because a lot of procedures are finished within that time.

The non-interventional clinical study has been sponsored by 3M ESPE, Germany.