Effective pain management is a crucial aspect of pediatric dentistry, as it directly affects a child’s comfort, cooperation, and overall experience during dental procedures. Achieving adequate anesthesia is essential for minimizing discomfort and anxiety, allowing for smoother treatments. Local anesthetics play a key role in pain control, with lidocaine being the most commonly used due to its well-established safety and efficacy. However, articaine has gained attention in recent years because of its enhanced diffusion ability, which may provide better anesthesia, particularly in areas with dense bone.

One technique that has been introduced to improve the effectiveness of local anesthetics is buffering, which involves adjusting the anesthetic solution’s pH to be closer to physiological levels. This method has been found to decrease injection pain, speed up the onset of anesthesia, and enhance its overall performance by increasing the availability of active anesthetic molecules. Although both articaine and lidocaine can be buffered, limited research has directly compared their effectiveness in pediatric patients.

This study aims to evaluate the clinical efficacy of buffered 4% articaine versus buffered 2% lidocaine in pediatric dental procedures using a randomized crossover split-mouth design. The primary focus will be on anesthetic onset time, pain perception during injection, and the duration of anesthesia. By analyzing these factors, the study seeks to determine whether buffered articaine provides any significant advantages over buffered lidocaine, offering insights that may help improve pain management strategies in pediatric dentistry