Assessment of Pain Perception in Children During Local Anesthesia and Tooth Extraction Procedures: A Clinical Study

Objective: Evaluation and comparison of pain in pedi- atric patients following local anesthesia administration and primary tooth extraction using the Wong-Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale (WBS). Material and Methods: A total of 90 children (age between 4-11 years) whose teeth were indicated for extraction for various reasons were included in the study. Before dental treatments, behavioral man- agement was given to all children with the tell-show-do technique. Fol- lowing topical anesthesia, local anesthetics were applied to the relevant area, and tooth extractions were performed. Perceived pain after local anesthesia and tooth extraction was recorded separately by asking the patients using the WBS. Mean values and standard deviations were cal- culated and comparisons between groups were made with the Mann- Whitney U test. Results: The mean WBS value was 4.49, with the highest palatal infiltration anesthesia. Following this, 3.8 in the mandibular block, 3.42 in lingual, 2.3 in buccal infiltration anesthesia, and 1.2 in tooth extraction respectively. There was no statistically sig- nificant difference between the genders in the WBS values after tooth extraction, mandibular block anesthesia, buccal, palatal and lingual in- filtration anesthesia (p 0.05). Conclusion: As a result of this study, palatal infiltration and mandibular block anesthesia were identified as the most painful anesthesia techniques perceived by children.