Assessment of pain and pain relief in children at a dental appointment

Abstract

Relevance. Subjective assessment of pain in children is traditionally implemented using visual analogue scales. The need for comfortable dental treatment in children is obvious, therefore, in order to obtain the most reliable data, it is necessary to develop pain rating scales and the effectiveness of pain management in accordance with the age of the child.Purpose. Development of visual analogue scales designed to assess the effectiveness of pain relief when performing outpatient dental interventions in children, depending on the age of the child.Materials and methods. A visual analogue scale was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of pain relief in children at an outpatient dental appointment, in accordance with the age of the child. 100 patients aged 4 to 12 years were examined.Results. The reaction and behaviour of the child during dental treatment using local anesthesia were the basis of the designed pain rating scales. In the age group of 4-7 years, the visual analogue scale was filled in by the doctor, the child and the parent, and in the second group of patients aged 7 to 12 years, the scale was filled in by the child and the doctor, since in this age category children could independently correlate themselves with the picture on the scale.Conclusions. The designed scales of subjective assessment of the effectiveness of local anesthesia in children allow to determine the quality of the studied methods and means of local anesthesia in pediatric dental practice.