Anesthetic procedures

Local Anaesthetic

This type of injection is inserted into your gum so that the surrounding area is “numbed”. This medicine is called local anesthesia. Local anesthetic is a type of painkilling medication that is used to numb areas of the body during some surgical procedures. Local anesthetic causes a complete loss of feeling to a specific area of your body without causing any loss of consciousness.

Lidocaine is the most common local anesthetic that dentists use. However, there are many others, which all have names ending in “-caine.”
The dentist has two types of local anaesthetic injections available for use depending on the procedure being performed.
The first of which is a block injection that is used to numb a whole section of your mouth, like the left side of your upper jaw.
Alternatively, the dentist may use an infiltration injection to numb a more local, specific area.
A dentist may apply a numbing gel so that you will not feel the injection. Once the gel has had time to have an effect, your dentist will carefully inject the anesthetic. The numb effect of the local anesthetic injection often lasts up to eight hours. This means that in many cases, by the time you leave the dentist clinic, your mouth may still be numb. This can hinder certain everyday tasks such as talking or eating.

General Anaesthetic

General anesthetic is a type of anesthesia. This is medication that causes loss of sensation. It is used to give pain relief during surgery. General anesthetic makes you completely lose consciousness so that surgery can be carried out without causing any pain or discomfort. If you’re planning to “go under,” keep in mind that the effects of general anesthesia may take several hours to wear off. Dentists typically require a patient to arrange for a ride home and a few hours of aftercare following and dental procedures in which general anesthesia is used.

Anesthetic works by blocking the signals that pass along your nerves to your brain. Nerves are bundles of fibers that use chemical and electrical signals to pass information around your body. General anesthetic stops your brain recognising the signals coming from your nerves so that you cannot feel anything.

IV Sedation

IV Sedation or Intravenous Sedation is a technique of providing analgesia (pain relief), during painful procedures in dentistry. It involves intravenous injection of a sedative, which makes a person drowsy and unaware of painful stimuli generated during the procedure or surgery. An anesthetized person will not feel any sensations and is unable to perform any voluntary movements or even breathe by himself.