LAUSR

BACKGROUND Children's pain in dentistry has undesirable short- and long-term consequences; therefore, less invasive treatments merit consideration. AIM To investigate procedural pain scores for two treatments for carious primary molars in New Zealand primary care. DESIGN Split-mouth randomised control trial, secondary outcome analysis. Children (4-8-years) with proximal carious lesions on matched primary molars had one tooth treated with the Hall technique (HT), and one treated with a conventional stainless-steel crown (CT); treatment type and order of treatment were randomly allocated (allocation concealment). The Wong-Baker self-report pain scale measured pretreatment dental pain, procedural pain at each treatment, and post-operative pain. RESULTS Data were analysed for 103 children; 49 children had HT first, and 54 children had CT first. Procedural pain scores did not differ by treatment type, with 71.8% and 76.7% of children reporting low pain for HT and CT respectively. Fewer children reported low procedural pain for the second treatment than the first (p=0.047). Most children reported low procedural pain for both treatments (58.3%), although 41.7% experienced moderate-high procedural pain with at least one treatment. CONCLUSIONS The HT caused pain for as many children as the CT. There is an opportunity for better dental pain management in this setting.