<![CDATA[Local anesthesia is important to do prior to tooth extraction procedure to control the patient's pain. Local anesthetic technique in dentistry consists of topical, infiltration, and anesthetic blocks. For molar tooth extraction, mandibular block technique is used either direct or indirect. This study aimed to see if there are differences in effectiveness of inferior alveolar nerve block anesthesia techniques between direct and indirect. This clinical experimental design study used 20 patients as samples during February-April. 10 patients were taken as a group that carried out direct technique while 10 others group conducted indirect techniques. The sample selection using purposive sampling method. Pain level were measured using objective assessments (pain experienced by the patient after a given stimulus) and subjective evaluation (thick taste perceived by the patient). The average time of onset in direct and indirect techniques in each sample was 16.88 ± 5.30 and 102.00 ± 19.56 seconds (subjectively) and 22.50 ± 8.02 and 159.00 ± 25.10 (objectively). These results indicated direct techniques onset faster than indirect techniques. The average duration of direct and indirect techniques respectively was 121.63 ± 8.80 and 87.80 ± 9.96 minutes (subjectively) and 91.88 ± 8.37 and 60.20 ± 10.40 minutes (objectively). These results indicated the duration of direct technique is longer than indirect technique. There was no significant difference when viewed from anesthesia depth and aspiration level. This study indicated that direct technique had better effect than indirect technique in terms of onset and duration, while in terms of anesthesia depth and aspiration level was relatively equal. Insignificant differences were obtained when assessing anesthetic technique successful rate based on gender, age and extracted tooth.]]>
