Selecting drugs for the pregnant dental patient

When treating pregnant patients, dental practitioners should avoid prescribing some drugs routinely used for local anesthesia, sedation, analgesia or infection. Dental practitioners need to determine that the potential benefits of the drug required for the mother's dental care outweigh the risks to her fetus. This article briefly reviews the relative risks of therapeutic agents commonly used in dental care to help practitioners select the safest drugs for use by pregnant patients.