Survey on trends in the use of analgesic anti-inflammatory medicines and anti-inflammatory enzyme medicines in dental practice

among 17 private dental university hospitals in Japan

Abstract

The trend of using analgesic, antipyretic, and anti-inflammatory medicines in dentistry was surveyed and the results in 1982 (in 17 private dental university hospitals) and in 1992 (in 29 national public and private university hospitals) were reported. After over ten years, because the analgesic antipyretic medicines have been effective for toothache, we surveyed the trend of using them in 17 private dental university hospitals.
A questionnaire survey was conducted on the amount of consumption of anodyne resolutives and anti-inflammatory enzyme medicines for three months from July to September 2006, and a survey was conducted on the cases of concomitant use of anti-inflammatory medicines, stomach medicine using anodyne resolutives together, and one dose volume of analgesic and antipyretic medicines by age in 10 days of September 2006.
After the investigation in 17 hospitals a list of 20 analgesic, antipyretic, and anti-inflammatory medicines was prepared and the largest consumption was found to be loxoprofen sodium and diclofenac sodium. Acetaminophen was ranked third in this investigation although it had a higher position in previous investigations. An increase in the amount of consumption with loxoprofen sodium and diclofenac sodium was expected because of an adaptation of these drugs to toothache. However, loxoprofen sodium accounted for 63% of all anodyne resolutives, substantially exceeding the previous investigation of 32.6%. There were many examples of continuous taking of anodyne resolutives and the use rate was 3.3%. More than 50% of older patients used a single dose of 2 tablets of loxoprofen sodium and diclofenac sodium. There were also many uses of powdered stomachic medicine for an anodyne resolutive and stomach medicine together although there were large differences in the use rate by facilities. For manufacturing anti-inflammatory enzyme pills, lysozyme chloride was mostly used. This may be due to abolition of dental adaptation of serapeptase, which exhibited a large amount of consumption last time.