Published Research by Dr. Jason Kung

Peer-reviewed, PubMed-indexed papers authored by Dr. Jason Kung, DDS, MS. First-author and co-author roles are listed for each publication.

Authored by Dr. Jason Kung, DDS, MS. Last reviewed: 2026-05-29.

  1. Does Articaine Provide an Advantage over Lidocaine in Patients with Symptomatic Irreversible Pulpitis? A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

    Kung J, McDonagh M, Sedgley CM. Journal of Endodontics 2015;41(11):1784–1794.

    First author

    This is the question every nervous root canal patient really wants answered: "Will I actually be numb?" Dr. Kung led the most comprehensive analysis of this question to date — pooling 10 separate clinical trials covering 746 patients who all had symptomatic irreversible pulpitis (the hot, throbbing, hard-to-numb tooth that most often needs a root canal). The team found that overall, articaine was about twice as likely as lidocaine to achieve successful anesthesia (odds ratio 2.21, P = 0.0006). The most clinically useful finding was for the hardest cases: when a lower-jaw block injection numbed the lip but the tooth itself still hurt, switching to a supplemental articaine injection right at the tooth was 3.55× more effective than lidocaine at finally getting the patient numb. This is exactly the protocol Dr. Kung uses for difficult-to-anesthetize teeth — and it's why the practice can confidently tell patients that being "impossible to numb" is almost always a solvable problem.

    PubMed: 26293174

  2. From Systematic Reviews to Clinical Recommendations for Evidence-Based Health Care: Validation of Revised Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews (R-AMSTAR) for Grading of Clinical Relevance

    Kung J, Chiappelli F, Cajulis OO, Avezova R, Kossan G, Chew L, Maida CA. The Open Dentistry Journal 2010;4:84–91.

    First author

    Not all "studies" are equally trustworthy. This methodology paper, with Dr. Kung as first author, helped validate R-AMSTAR — a structured scoring tool that lets clinicians measure how rigorously a systematic review was actually conducted before they rely on it. In plain terms: it's the skill of separating strong evidence from weak evidence. That discipline is the foundation of how this practice decides which treatments and technologies are genuinely supported by the literature versus which are marketing — the same evidence-first standard you'll see throughout this site.

    PubMed: 21088686

  3. Reliability of Quality Assessments in Research Synthesis: Securing the Highest Quality Bioinformation for HIT

    Chiappelli F, Phil AB, Arora R, Phi L, Giroux A, Uyeda M, Kung J, Ramchandani M. Bioinformation 2012;8:691.

    Co-author

    A companion contribution to the evidence-appraisal work above, examining how reliably different reviewers reach the same quality judgments when grading the medical literature. Reproducible, reliable appraisal is what keeps clinical decisions honest — and it's the methodological background Dr. Kung brings to interpreting endodontic research for patients.

    PubMed: 23055612