Yesterday I had a cavity filled on the bottom left side of my mouth. The dentist gave me the usual shots of anaesthesia and all was well. Today he had to fill a cavity on the bottom right side on my mouth, but the anaesthesia just wasn’t kicking in. After a few shots he said he can’t give me anymore anaesthesia and we rescheduled for another day.
Any idea why anaesthesia would work one day and not work the next day?
Edit: I should mention that my tongue went numb, but not the area around my teeth.
In: Other
Your nerve might not be in the spot where the dentist injected the anesthetic. Facial nerves are broadly symmetrical, but not identical, I have a similar problem where one side is about 2 in lower than the other, so the dentist kept missing it. Because it’s a localized drug, it needs to get really close to the nerve otherwise it’s not effective and gets dissipated in your blood; but there’s only so much anesthetic your body can safely metabolize so your doc wants you to get rid of it first.
The anaesthetics given to you buy the dentist is a fairly low power drug that have to be administered directly to the nerve cluster. If the dentist miss and inject it elsewhere then it is not going to have any effect and will just be distributed harmlessly through your body in a very dilluted form over the next few hours. That is the most likely case. He probably just missed the nerve cluster.
Did you not get numb at all? Not in any fashion? Maybe you have a harder nerve to hit on the right side. It’s happened to me a few times. I can usually tell they have missed if my lip gets fat or my heart starts racing. Fun times… 😖
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