Greater Auricular Nerve Infiltration: An Effective Way To Control Per-Operative Pain During Mandibular Third Molar Surgery

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of Greater Auricular Nerve infiltration (GANI) along with conventional Inferior Alveolar Nerve Block (IANB) in reducing pain during mandibular third molar surgery. Study Design: Quasi-experimental study Place and Duration of Study: Military Dental Centre Quetta, Pakistan from Jun 2020 to May 2021. Methodology: One hundred patients recruited as per the inclusion criteria were divided in two groups. Group-A received inferior alveolar nerve block and greater auricular nerve infiltration, and Group-B received inferior alveolar nerve block only. Surgical removal of mandibular impacted third molar was carried out using same technique. Per operative pain score was recorded on visual analogue scale of 0-10. Data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23. Chi square test was applied to compare presence/absence of pain while independent samples t test was used to compare mean pain scores between the study groups. The p value <0.05 was considered significant. Results: Majority of the subjects (53%) had Class II impactions while 17% subjects had Class III impactions. Meantime taken for surgical procedure was 21.67±5.59 mins A higher percentage (70%) of subjects in Group-A reported an absence of pain during the surgical procedure in comparison to 12% subjects in Group-B (p<0.001) Conclusion: Use of Greater Auricular Nerve anesthesia along with conventional IANB results in better per-operative pain control in mandibular third molar surgery.