Effect on blood pressure and pulse rate after administration of an epinephrine containing dental local anaesthetic in hypertensive patients

Objective: to document safety for use, through recording changes in blood pressure and pulse rate, after administering 3.6 ml of a 2% lignocaine with 1:100,000 epinephrine dental local anaesthetic in a group of hypertensive patients. methodology: the present study was conducted at shaikh zayed medical complex, lahore, from may to december 2008, using a convenience sampling technique. the first 60 walk-in patients in the dental outpatient department planned for tooth extraction were enrolled in the study. out of these 60 patients, 10 had prehypertension (bp = 130/90), 10 had stage 1 hypertension (bp=140-159/90-99) and 10 study subjects were suffering from stage 2 hypertension (bp=160-179/100-109). thirty age and sex matched normo-tensive patients requiring tooth extraction acted as the control group. all patients were administered two cartridges each of 1.8 ml of dental local anaesthesia containing 2% lignocaine with 1:100,000 epinephrine. blood pressure and pulse rate (pr) were the risk indicators that were measured thrice; pre-injection, 2 minutes and 5 minutes after injection. results: a decrease in systolic in stage 2 hypertension patients after 2 and 5 minutes of injections was noted. the diastolic bp (dbp) fell in all the groups after injections. mean pulse rate increased from three to four beats per minute in all groups except in stage 2 hypertension patients where it slightly decreased. conclusion: epinephrine containing dental local anaesthesia decreased systolic blood pressure in stage 2 hypertension patients included in this study. there was an observed decrease of 21mm hg in systolic blood pressure hypertension patients but with no adverse effects.