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

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Local anaesthesia injection is widely acceptedas the gold standard for pain management during variousdental procedures. Intra-oral topical anaesthesia not onlyreduces the pain of injection prick but also several minordental procedures can be carried out under topical anaesthetic.Study aimed to determine the usage, type & effectiveness ofvarious topical anaesthetics used for minor dental proceduresin pediatric patients.Material and Methods: A self-structured, closed endedquestionnaire was emailed to 100 private dental practitionersin 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 gelfor administration of local anesthesia. 24.1% used topicalanesthetic for extraction of nearly exfoliating deciduous teeth.42.6% responded that the effect of topical anesthetic wasachieved between 30 seconds to 1 minute.Conclusion: All the dentists were aware of using topicalanesthetic and the most preferred delivery system was gel.