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The efficacy of local anaesthetics administered by general dental practitioners
Aim:
To obtain empirical evidence for the efficacy of local anaesthesia in dentistry.
Design:
Retrospective analysis of serial administrations of local anaesthesia.
Methods:
Dentist and patient evaluations of the success of differing techniques (infiltration and block) of anaesthesia in a variety of general practice procedures. Results were analysed for correlation between dentist and patient using a 5-point scale.
Results:
Complete data were analysed for 331 administrations. In the hands of experienced dentists over 93% of operations were assessed by both dentist and patient as comfortable or completely comfortable. Dentists were generally able to judge patient comfort (P < 0.001). Administrations requiring repeat injections were less comfortable. Dentists judged infiltration administrations more comfortable than block administrations (P < 0.001), but patient judgements of comfort failed to distinguish between differing techniques at the P < 0.05 level.
Conclusions:
Some variations in success rate exist between dentists the most dental procedures under local anaesthetic in general practice were assessed as being comfortable or better by both dentists and patients.