Suppression of postoperative pain by the combination of a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, flurbiprofen, and a long-acting local anesthetic, etidocaine.

The analgesic efficacy of the combination of a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, flurbiprofen, and a long-acting local anesthetic, etidocaine, was evaluated for the suppression of acute postoperative pain. Subjects having two impacted third molars removed at two appointments received either the experimental combination or standard treatment in a randomized, crossover design. The experimental treatment consisted of 100 mg flurbiprofen 30 minutes before surgery, 1.5% etidocaine with 1:200,000 epinephrine five minutes before surgery, and 100 mg flurbiprofen three hours after surgery. Standard treatment consisted of 10 mg oxycodone plus 650 mg acetaminophen 30 minutes before surgery, 2% lidocaine with 1:100,000 epinephrine five minutes before surgery, and a second dose of the oxycodone-acetaminophen combination three hours after surgery. Pain intensity was rated hourly from one to seven hours after surgery, using a variety of ordinal and analog scales. The flurbiprofen-etidocaine combination resulted in significantly less postoperative pain than the oxycodone plus acetaminophen-lidocaine combination on all four analgesic scales used and was preferred by the majority of the patients. This study shows that pretreatment with a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, flurbiprofen, in combination with a long-acting local analgesic, etidocaine, suppresses pain to a greater extent than a potent opiate mild/analgesic combination and lidocaine without an increase in side-effect liability.