Survey of Usage and Type of Topical Anesthesia among Dentists of Tricity

Abstract

Introduction: Local anaesthesia injection is widely accepted as the gold standard for pain management during various dental procedures. Intra-oral topical anaesthesia not only reduces the pain of injection prick but also several minor dental procedures can be carried out under topical anaesthetic. Study aimed to determine the usage, type & effectiveness of various topical anaesthetics used for minor dental procedures in pediatric patients. Material and Methods: A self-structured, closed ended questionnaire was emailed to 100 private dental practitioners in the tricity and were asked to fill and mail it back. Results: 59% dentists responded, out of them 70.7% routinely used topical anesthetic. 64.8% used Lidocaine gel for administration of local anesthesia. 24.1% used topical anesthetic for extraction of nearly exfoliating deciduous teeth. 42.6% responded that the effect of topical anesthetic was achieved between 30 seconds to 1 minute. Conclusion: All the dentists were aware of using topical anesthetic and the most preferred delivery system was gel.