Objective: A majority of minor oral surgical procedures require the use of local anaesthetics containing vasoconstrictors as part of the composition. These vasoconstrictors cause some hemodynamic changes either by direct action on the cardiac muscle or by stimulation of the autonomic innervations of the heart. Depending on the concentration of the vasoconstrictor, an increased heart rate, increased force of cardiac contraction, and ultimately increased blood pressure may ensue. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of vasoconstrictors contained in local anaesthetics on arterial blood pressure during minor oral surgical procedures. Material and Methods: This was a one year prospective, randomized, comparative study involving the assessment of blood pressure and pulse rate by using an electronic digital blood pressure monitoring device amongst consenting patients who were referred for tooth extraction. The potential research participants were randomly allocated into either the study or the control group. The study group was treated using 2% lignocaine with 1:80,000 epinephrine, while the control was treated using 2% plain lignocaine (without epinephrine). Normal or controlled-hypertensive patients between the ages of 18 to 55 years were enrolled into the study. Results: A total of 100 subjects with a mean age of 34.66±10.3 years participated in the study. There was no statistically significant difference in blood pressure and pulse rate between the patients in both the study group and control group. Conclusion: Optimal use of adrenaline-containing local anaesthetic does not cause a statistically significant increase in blood pressure or pulse rate.

Objective: Surgical extraction of impacted mandibular third molars is complicated by pain and swelling. The surgical wound can be closed either partially or completely. This study compared the incidence of postoperative pain and swelling between partial and complete wound closure techniques. Material and Methods: 120 consenting subjects were randomly allocated into two groups. Group 1 had complete wound closure while group 2 had partial closure. The mean duration of surgery was 3.63 minutes higher in complete wound closure than the partial wound closure technique. The research subjects were evaluated for the degree of pain and swelling at 24 hours, 3rd and 5th days postoperatively using verbal rating scale (VRS) for pain and visual analogue scale (VAS) for swelling. The chi (x2) test was used to determine associations between categorical variables and a p-value of 0.05 or less was considered significant in this study. Repeated measures ANOVA was done for pain and swelling. Results: There were 62 (51.7%) males and 58 (48.3%) females; age range was 18 to 45 years and mean age was 31.7±5.7. Pain and swelling was maximal on the first postoperative day and this gradually reduced over time. Post hoc tests using Bonferroni correction revealed that wound closure technique elicited a reduction in pain from Day 1, Day 3 to Day 5 (2.92±0.28, 1.18±0.65 and 0.34±0.48, respectively) which was statistically significant (p=0.000). There was a significant difference in swelling between the two techniques (p=0.000). Conclusion: The wound closure technique elicits a statistically significant reduction in postoperative pain and swelling. The partial third molar wound closure technique provides greater reduction in postoperative pain and swelling.