A short transcript excerpt from a YouTube video by Dr. Sanda Moldovan about non-narcotic ways to control dental pain. The speakers discuss local dental anesthetics (e.g., marcaine), differences between formulations with and without epinephrine, patient concerns about palpitations, and practical alternatives such as using more dilute epinephrine or formulations with norepinephrine.
What we're talking about is a local numbing agents. And some of you might say, oh, is it novocaine? Novocaine is just an old name. Typically refer to that when they bunch everything in. But marcane is one of those dental anesthetics that we use. And as a periodontist, I also use it a lot for long term anesthetic effects. There's anesthetics with epinephrine and without any epinephrine. And I know I have some patients, actually, especially on the holistic side, they say, oh, I don't want any epinephrine at all. I'm allergic to it because I get heart palpitation. Can someone be allergic to epinephrine?
No. There is no such thing as allergy to epinephrine. There are side effects. There are some people who are sensitive to the effects of the epinephrine or it could be the injection. It's difficult to distinguish. Some people think it's the epinephrine, but they don't like the shot and that makes them anxious and they may blame it on the epinephrine. There are some people who get palpitations from the epinephrine. How do we avoid this? Multiple ways. We can use a more dilute version with very little epinephrine, or a different formulation that has norepinephrine, which affects heart rate less. There's a.
