Making local anesthesia more effective and more comfortable.
Patients do not want to experience pain during their dental treatment. Fortunately, local anesthesia forms the backbone of pain control techniques in dentistry. Local anesthetics are the safest and most effective drugs for the prevention and management of pain. Yet, on occasion, achieving profound anesthesia painlessly can be challenging. In this program we will discuss the means to making dental local anesthetic injections both more effective and more comfortable. Topics include: articaine; buffering (the local anesthetic ‘on switch’); and phentolamine (the local anesthetic ‘off switch’). An algorithm for more successful mandibular anesthesia will be presented.
Learning objectives:
Discuss the advantages of articaine HCl compared with other dental local anesthetics
List 3 advantages of buffering local anesthetics
Discuss the pharmacology behind phentolamine mesylate and its ability to reverse local anesthesia
Discuss the algorithm for more successful mandibular anesthesia
