Comparative split-mouth study of the anesthetic efficacy of 4% articaine versus 0.5% bupivacaine in impacted mandibular third molar extraction

Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare the clinical efficacy of articaine at 4% (epinephrine 1:100,000) with bupivacaine at 0.5% (epinephrine 1:200,000) for surgical extraction of impacted mandibular third molars. Study Design: This was a randomized, double blind, split-mouth, clinical trial. Thirty-six patients took part and underwent extraction of 72 lower third molars. The variables studied were: anesthetic latency time, intra-operative bleeding, anesthetic quality, hemodynamic changes during the surgical intervention, anesthetic duration in the soft tissues, post-operative analgesia and post-operative pain at 2, 6, 12 and 24 hours using a visual analogue scale, as well as a…