Abstract
Only a few analgesics are applicable to odontogenic pain under the existing Japanese health insurance system, although there are many kinds of analgesics available for medical diseases. Therefore, additional analgesics have been requested to be prescribed against odontogenic pain to the patient, especially with systemic diseases. On the other hand, it is necessary to establish an appropriate quantitative method to evaluate the effect of analgesics against odontogenic pain. Visual analogue scale (VAS) has recently come into general to evaluate the effect of analgesics against pain. The aim of this study was to establish a quantitative criterion for evaluating the effect of analgesics on odontogenic pain.
One hundred and sixteen patients with odontogenic pain were prescribed 60mg loxoprofen sodium hydrate, 500mg mefenamic acid or 400mg acetaminophen. They recorded the strength of odontogenic pain by VAS before medication and at 15 and 30 minutes, 1, 2, 3 and 5 hours after medication, and also graded strength, promptness and durability of analgesic effect at four ranks.
The decreased/increased rate of VAS value (VAS⊿%) significantly decreased after taking analgesics. There were no significant differences in VAS⊿% change among the three analgesics. It was found that VAS⊿% was correlated with patient's satisfaction with analgesic effects, including strength, promptness and durability of the prescribed drugs.
The results of this study suggested that the pain evaluation method by VAS used in this study may be useful to evaluate the effectiveness of analgesics against odontogenic pain.
