Anaesthetic use – Data Collection
Protocol
| Patient identification | Patients attending the Oral Surgery Department of the Royal Dental Hospital of Melbourne requiring removal of both upper back wisdom teeth are identified by independent clinicians who are not involved in the study. |
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| Patient recruitment | Patients are invited to participate by a staff member from the Department of Oral Surgery, and given a plain language explanation of the study. |
| Informed consent | If the patient agrees to participate, he or she is provided with Informed Consent form and ask to sign. An appointment was made for the surgery. |
| Assignment to treatment side for lignocaine | The randomisation list is a list of patient numbers from 1 to 50 with the assignment of lignocaine to either the left or right side of the mouth. The vials containing the palatal injections are prepared for each patient according to the list by the Royal Melbourne Hospital Pharmacy. The first patient receives first assignment on the list, the second patient receives the second, and so on. The surgeon opens the treatments prepared for the particular patient, but remains unaware which palatal injection if saline and which is lignocaine. The patient is injected with saline on one side of the palate and lignocaine on the other. |
| Surgical procedure | The surgeon waits for five minutes, and then removes the upper right side molar first, followed by the upper left side molar. Standard surgical procedures are followed. |
| Patient data collection – immediate | At the end of the surgery, patients are asked to rate their level of discomfort during the extraction using a visual analogue scale. The rate the side extracted first, and then the side extracted second. |
| Patient data collection – 3 hours later | Patients are asked to take a form home to complete three hours after the surgery. On this form, the patients again rate pain on each side using a visual analogue scale, to indicate which side was more comfortable, and to guess which side received lignocaine. Patients were asked to return the form by post or to bring it to their follow-up appointment. |
Measuring the VAS responses
The distance of the mark from the left end of the scale was measured; the maximum was 135mm. The data have been rescaled so that the minimum (no pain at all) was 0 and maximum was 100.
