J Dent Anesth Pain Med.  2018 Dec;18(6):319-332. 10.17245/jdapm.2018.18.6.319.

Efficacy of dental local anesthetics: A review

Affiliations
  • 1University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
  • 2University of Western Australia, Division of Oral Diagnostics and Surgical Sciences, Perth, Australia. johan.apsdmfr@hotmail.com, johan.aps@uwa.edu.au

Abstract

The objective of this review was to investigate the efficacy of dental local anesthetics, as it is well known among clinicians that local anesthesia may be challenging in some circumstances. Therefore, the focus of this review was on the efficacy of the products used in dental local anesthesia. In a Pubmed database literature search conducted, a total of 8646 articles were found to be related to dental local anesthetics. After having applied the inclusion criteria (human research, performed in the last 10 years, written in English language, and focus on dental local anesthetics) and having assessed the quality of the papers, 30 were deemed eligible for inclusion in this review. The conclusion of this review is that none of the dental local anesthetic amides provide 100% anesthesia. The problem appears to be more pronounced when mandibular teeth are attempted to be anaesthetized and especially if there is irreversible pulpitis involved. The authors conclude that this finding suggest exploration of more efficient techniques to administer dental local anesthesia, especially in the mandible, to establish a 100% efficacy, is needed.

Keyword

Amides; Local Anesthesia

MeSH Terms

Amides
Anesthesia
Anesthesia, Local
Anesthetics, Local*
Mandible
Pulpitis
Tooth
Amides
Anesthetics, Local

Figure

  • Fig. 1 The decision process of the review explained, mentioning the number of papers collected, assessed and reviewed.


Cited by  1 articles

Resistance to local anesthesia in people with the Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes presenting for dental surgery
Jane R. Schubart, Eric Schaefer, Piotr Janicki, Sanjib D. Adhikary, Amber Schilling, Alan J. Hakim, Rebecca Bascom, Clair A. Francomano, Satish R. Raj
J Dent Anesth Pain Med. 2019;19(5):261-270.    doi: 10.17245/jdapm.2019.19.5.261.


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