BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Adequate postoperative pain control is a challenge among surgical specialties, in spite of recent advances in analgesic techniques and analgesics. Caffeine has been used as therapeutic adjuvant to potentiate analgesic efficacy of some drugs, however there are still no scientific investigation reports on the association with sodium dipyrone in the postoperative period of dental procedures. So, this study aimed at observing and comparing the efficacy of sodium dipyrone alone or in association with caffeine to control postoperative pain of dental procedures, considering hemodynamic parameters of patients as indicators of anxiety and pain during surgery. METHODS: This is a crossover and double-blind study involving 50 young and healthy patients (25 males and 25 females) referred for bilateral extraction of impacted mandibular third molars. Operated side, patient's gender and analgesic drug used were randomized. Visual analog scale scores were submitted to Friedman test (α = 0.05) to compare pain intensity at defined intervals (preoperative, immediate postoperative, 1, 2, 4 and 12 hours, 1, 2, 3 and 7 days after surgery). Blood pressure and heart rate were measured in the preoperative period, after anesthetic injection and in the postoperative period (Friedman test, (α = 0.05). RESULTS: Patients have referred mild pain in the first two postoperative days and there has been no statistically significant difference between the analgesic efficacy of sodium dipyrone alone or in association with caffeine in different evaluated intervals. Most cardiovascular changes were within normality, considering anxiety and stress induced by surgery. CONCLUSION: The therapeutic protocol proposed in this study has not shown statistically significant difference between sodium dipyrone associated or not to caffeine to control post-tooth extraction pain.
Caffeine; Dipyrone; Pain; Third molar; Tooth extraction
