Pre-operative diflunisal for pain relief following third molar surgery under general anaesthesia

In order to find out whether long-acting non-narcotic analgesics given pre-operatively reduce the post-operative pain and decrease the narcotic analgesic requirements following third molar surgery under general anaesthesia, thirty Hong Kong Chinese patients undergoing this procedure were randomly given either diflunisal or placebo one hour prior to anaesthesia. Pain reduction was monitored for ten hours from the end of surgery using visual analogue scales. Except in the first hour, pain reduction at each hour was significantly better in the diflunisal group than in the placebo group. Furthermore, only one patient required narcotic analgesics in the diflunisal group compared with five in the placebo group. In patients who had multiple tooth sectioning or very difficult surgery of one or both lower third molars, the requirement for post-operative analgesics was high in the placebo group.