Comparison of the anesthetic latency of Articaine, Lidocaine, Levobupivacaine and Ropivacaine, through "Pulp Tester"

INTRODUCTION : A thorough knowledge of dental anesthetics, like the lag time of the drug, can ensure the success of pain control during and after surgery. OBJECTIVE : Comparing the latency time of 4 anesthetics, in other words, the time between the deposition of the local anesthetic and when its effects become noticeable. However, this is not related with the successful pain control during and after surgery (depth of anesthesia). MATERIAL AND METHOD : We conducted a double-blind, crossover, randomized study with 30 volunteers underwent 04 procedures in one-week intervals from the posterior superior alveolar block. In the second molar being treated, the pulp tester was used at intervals of 02 minutes, considering the insensitivity of the pulp when there is no response after two consecutive tests of 80muV, peaking at 10 minutes thus determining the latency period of the anesthetic. The data were submitted to t-student test, Friedman test and Kruskal-Wallis test (p<0.05). RESULT : There were no statistically significant differences (p=0.8327) between the anesthetics. In all cases the median was 2 minutes. Still, there were no significant differences between genders in relation to age (p=0.4545), as well as between the values when it attempted to observe the influence of gender in latency values (p=0.6754). CONCLUSION : Since the average lag time was identical, the choice of the drug will depend on the duration of the oral surgery and the necessity of postoperative analgesia.