Intraoral Local Anesthesia and Ocular Complications

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background Ocular complications due to intraoral local anesthesia are rare but most distressing to the dentist and patient. Ocular complications after local anesthetic injections are rarely reported in the literature and these complications include strabismus, ptosis, diplopia, blindness, ophthalmoplegia, loss of accommodation. The dentist must be vigilant and beware of ocular complications when performing local anesthetic nerve blocks. Aim The aim and objective of this review is to help the dental surgeons to understand about the causes, mechanisms and symptoms of ocular complications to enable them to diagnose, manage and prevent those complications. Materials and methods The revision included a systematic literature search of past 10 years with keywords dental anesthesia, ocular complications, blindness after dental anesthesia, diplopia following dental anesthesia. Papers for review were chosen from the selected articles. When data did not appear sufficient or were inconclusive; recommendations were based upon expert or consensus opinion by experienced researchers and clinicians. Conclusion The various ocular complications, its causes, mechanisms and management are emphasized in this review paper. As per literature review ocular complications are rare to occur but they are most distressing, clinicians should be aware of complications and should be able to diagnose and understand the complications for timely prevention and effective management. How to cite this article Patil K, Munoli K, Kumar V, Venkataraghavan K. Intraoral Local Anesthesia and Ocular Complications. World J Dent 2013;4(2):108-112.