Occular complications following dental local anesthesia

Abstract

Objective: To determine the frequencyof appearance and the factors most commonlyassociated with ocular complications following dental local anesthesia, also establishing the location and type of anesthesia used. StudyDesign: An indexed search in the Pubmed and Compludoc databases was carried out with the keywords "oral anesthesia", "ocular", "ophthalmologic", "damage", "complications", "injection". We established a limitation that the literature had to have been published after the year 1970. A total of 19 articles were obtained, forming a total sample of 37 patients. The patient's sex, age, nerve anesthetized, type of anesthetic used, ophthalmological complication present, recoverytime, treatment and side effects were analyzed. Results: There is a higher involvement of females (77%). The average age was 34.2 years. There was no preference for an anesthetic technique. Diplopia was the most common complication (65%), which coincides with the data fromother authors. Almost all of the complications were of a temporarynature, with an average recoverytime of 68 minutes. Conclusions: This is one of the few studies of its kind in dental literature, it thus being difficult to make precise conclusions. Ophthalmological complications are seldoma problem, diplopia being the most common among them. The authors appear to indicate an intravascular injection of the anesthetic as the cause of the problem, and therefore, it should be avoided in order to prevent accidents at the ocular level. © Medicina Oral.