What is local anesthesia and how is it different from topical anesthesia?
Local anesthesia is the use of medications injected into the ‘local’ area, the area immediately around what is to be operated on, which results in numbing. The medications used may last anywhere from one hour to most of the day. Local anesthesia generally involves a shot but topical anesthesia can be used to minimize the pain. Topical anesthesia using the same compounds but instead of going below the skin, the anesthesia is applied to the skin’s surface. The problem with topical anesthesia is that it does not penetrate very far under the skin’s surface so for more invasive procedures, local anesthesia with shots is required. What are regional nerve blocks? In different parts of the body, there are well defined patterns of nerve innervations. For instance, the sensation for the middle part of the cheek is from a nerve which comes out of the face just below the eye socket. By numbing this nerve, the entire cheek, upper lip, and upper teeth can be numbed. A regional nerve block takes adva
