Relationship between dental pain perception and 24 hour ambulatory blood pressure

Objective To investigate dental pain perception in a large group of essential hypertensive subjects. Methods A total of 130 hypertensive patients together with 51 normotensive subjects were submitted to tooth-electrical stimulation to determine the dental pain threshold (occurrence of pulp sensation) and tolerance (time when the subject asked for the test to be stopped). Blood pressure was measured at rest, before pain perception evaluation, and during a 24 h period by ambulatory monitoring. Results The normotensive and hypertensive subjects differed with regard to pain threshold (P= 0.002) and tolerance (P=0.01). Pain perception variables were significantly correlated with both resting blood pressure and 24 h, diurnal and nocturnal arterial pressures, the correlation between pain threshold and 24 h systolic blood pressure being the most significant (r = 0.31, P