Articaine - the best choice of local anesthetic in contemporary dentistry.

Local anesthesia forms the foundation of pain control techniques in clinical dentistry. Within the rich local anesthetic drugs available in dentistry for the prevention and management of pain 4% articaine solutions achieve highest level of anesthetic potency and lowest systemic toxicity in all clinical situations, prior to its superlative physicochemical characteristics and the pharmacological profile. These are - low lipid solubility, high plasma protein binding rate, fast metabolization, fast elimination half time; low blood level. Articaine inactivates in both ways: in the liver and the blood serum. It has good spreading through tissues. Thus, articaine seems to be the local anesthetic of first choice in tissues with suppurative inflammation, for adults, children (over 4), elderly, pregnant women, breastfeeding women, patients suffering from hepatic disorders and renal function impairment. In Articaine solutions (1: 200,000) epinephrine is in low concentration, thus in patients at high risk adverse responses are maximally decreased. In these patients articaine should be used with careful consideration of risk/benefit ratio. Articaine solutions must not be used in persons who are allergic or hypersensitive to sulphite, due to content of Sodium metabisulfite as vasoconstrictor's antioxidant in it. Incidence of serious adverse effects related to dental anesthesia with articaine is very low. Toxic reactions are usually due to an inadvertent intravascular injection or use of excessive dose. To avoid overdoses maximum recommendation dose (MRD) must not be exceeded and aspiration test always performed prior all LA injections. In these article we introduce new graphs providing a quick and effect way to determine maximum LA dose. If the overdose reactions develop, adherence to the basic step of emergency management with end to a successful outcome in virtually all cases.