comparison of pre-cooling and topical anasthetic in pain perception of palatal injection among pediatric patients

The Palatal injection is one of the most painful procedures in dentistry which could establish an unpleasant experience for pediatric patients. No study has been carried out to assess the effects of pre-cooling with ice during palatal injection for children yet. The present research is focused on comparison of the efficacy of pre-cooling and topical anesthetic gel on the pain perception of pediatric patients during the palatal injection.

This study is a randomized clinical trial with Split Mouth design. Fourteen 7-10 year-old Children who required bilateral Palatal anesthesia administration for routine dentistry procedures in one session had been selected and randomly categorized under two groups: Case Group(cooling) and control Group(Gel). Palatal injection was applied in the case group after using ice for one minute, and in the control group after consuming Benzocaine 20% anesthetic topical gel for one minute by one operator. The pain perception was assessed using SEM & Wong-Baker Faces pain rating scale. Mann-U-Whitney test was used for statistical analysis. P <0.05 was considered statistically significant.

The means of SEM scales were 1.42 and 1.57 for the study and the control group, respectively which was insignificant (p<0.9). The means of Wong-Baker pain rating scales for both the study and the control group were 2.86 which was not significant (p<0.9).

There seem to be no difference between using ice precooling and topical anesthetic gel for children receiving palatal anesthesia injection.