Current Concepts in Dentistry Day 2

Course description

The Renaissance of Local Anesthesia

Sunday, Nov. 8, 2020
Presented by Stanley F. Malamed, DDS

Local anesthesia forms the backbone of pain control techniques in contemporary dental practice. The subject of pain control in dentistry has recently undergone a renewal of interest, a renaissance of sorts. In this course, Dr. Malamed will present an in-depth look at many aspects of this important area of daily dental practice. In the first part of this course, we will look at research in the development of new drugs, both local anesthetics, such as articaine, as well as drugs to reverse soft tissue anesthesia –phentolamine mesylate, and buffered local anesthetics – producing a more rapid onset, more comfortable injection and more profound anesthesia. The recently FDA approved local anesthetic nasal mist, providing pulpal anesthesia to maxillary non-molar teeth, will be introduced followed by a discussion of these and other areas of current research into improving pain control.

The second part of this course will discuss the problem of providing clinically adequate anesthesia in the mandible: following review of the traditional inferior alveolar nerve block (NB), alternative approaches to effective mandibular anesthesia will be reviewed, including the Gow-Gates mandibular NB, PDL, Intraosseous anesthesia, the use of articaine by mandibular infiltration, and buffered lidocaine. The question to be answered is: “Is the Mandibular Block Passé?”