[The possible secondary effects in cases of local anesthesia]

Local anesthetics are the safest and most effective drugs for pain control. Over 300 million local anesthetic cartridges are administered by dentists in the United States of America annually, yet serious complications reported number but a handful. Complications are categorised as localised or systemic. Localised complications arise at the site of needle penetration or anesthetic administration while systemic complications involve the entire organism. Localised complications include needle breakage, paresthesia, trismus, haematoma and facial nerve paralysis, while systemic complications are psychogenic to the act of receiving an injection, allergy and drug overdose (toxic reaction). These potential complications are briefly described in the following paper.