A comparison of the incidence of cardiac arrhythmia during two methods of anaesthesia for dental extractions.

One hundred premedicated inpatients undergoing wisdom tooth extraction were divided into two groups of 50. Group A was anesthetized by a technique based on droperidol and phenoperidine, whilst group B was anaesthetized with halothane. The e.c.g. in both groups demonstrated a similar overall incidence of cardiac arrhythmia, but analysis revealed a significantly higher incidence of ventricular arrhythmia in group B. The heart rate was significantly less in group A.