Comparative evaluation of efficacy of EMLA and needleless jet anesthesia in non-surgical periodontal therapy

The treatment of periodontitis primarily consists of mechanical debridement carried out by means of thorough scaling and root planing that might sometimes be a painful procedure which requires the administration of some form of local anesthesia. The present study comparatively evaluates the anesthetic effect of three such forms, viz; eutectic mixture of 25 mg/g lignocaine plus 25 mg/g prilocaine (EMLA) and needleless jet anesthesia during SRP. 30 patients with probing depth of 5 mm or more and visual analog scale (VAS) score of ≥30 mm on probing were selected and asked to assess the pain by VAS and verbal rating scale (VRS) during SRP after application of the two agents. The difference between the visual analogue values of control, EMLA and Madajet XL is highly significant (p < 0.001). According to the VRS scores, 6.7% of the subjects in the EMLA group reported no pain, 80% mild pain, and 13.3% moderate pain. In the Madajet XL group, 46.7% reported no pain and 53.3% mild pain. In the control group 100% of the patients reported moderate pain when none of the anesthetic was administered. None reported severe pain. Thus, the data suggest that both anesthetics are able to produce anesthesia of the tissues. The needleless anesthesia was relatively superior in performance to EMLA.