An Ex Vivo Comparison of Pressures within Dental Pulp Space Using Conventional Anesthetic Technique Versus Needle-mounted Obturator

摘要

When performing endodontic treatment on teeth with inflamed vital pulps, traditional local anesthetic infiltration and block injection techniques may not result in profound anesthesia (1). These patients often have appropriate field anesthesia signs but report sharp pain upon nearing or entering the pulp chamber. In these cases, the intrapulpal (IP) injection technique is used in appropriately 15% of cases in the experience of the authors. The authors further note that this IP injection technique is painful and unpredictable in its efficacy. Hargreaves et al (1) recommend using IP injection as a last resort; according to them, it should only be used only "when all else fails."