Paresthesia is a possible adverse event associated with the administration of local anesthetics in dentistry. The purpose of this study was to analyze the 182 cases of non-surgical paresthesia associated with local anesthetic injection that were reported to Ontario’s Professional Liability Program from 1999 to 2008. Examined case parameters included patient age and gender, type and volume of local anesthetic, site of nerve injury, and other symptoms. All but two cases involved mandibular block injection. From 2006 to 2008 alone, 64 cases were reported; this projects to a reported incidence of 1 in 609,000 injections. For both anesthetic drugs available as 4% solutions, namely articaine and prilocaine, the observed frequencies for reporting were significantly greater than expected (chi-square, exact binomial distribution; P<0.01) based on the distribution of local anesthetic use by Ontario dentists. These data suggest that local anesthetic neurotoxicity may be involved in the development of post-injection paresthesia.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/25589 |
| Date | 31 December 2010 |
| Creators | Gaffen, Andrew |
| Contributors | Haas, Daniel |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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