Double Take: DENTSPLY Articadent®

In this Product Double Take, DPR spoke with Dr. Scott Dickinson about his experience working with DENTSPLY’sArticadent® Anesthetic (articaine HCI and epinephrine Injection, USP).

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I am a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Dental Medicine. I have practiced for 16 years, both for the military and private practice. Located in the Florida panhandle serving Milton and the surrounding areas, I am a practice owner for the Aspen Dental Group. My general practice does all facets of dentistry, including several routine oral surgery procedures every day.

Why did you start to use Articadent® Anesthetic?
 I started using Articadent because I had dental colleagues that were using it. They liked it and told me how they were using it. I thought, “Wow! I don’t have any anesthetic that could do what this could do.” So I started to use it, and it has fast become my number one anesthetic in the office. Now, I use it every day.

What do you like best about the product?
What I like best about Articadent is that it offers me the ability to get infiltrative anesthesia on the mandibular teeth. I do a lot of routine oral surgery for a general dentist. When you start to remove a tooth, you always get to a point where the patient may feel it or at least the feeling of pressure during luxation. But with Articadent I am having wonderful success even during more invasive procedures. This morning, I took out six teeth at the same time, and the patient never batted an eye. I do a case like that at least once a day.  

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What have been the results and/or patient responses?
I find that some of them [patients] don’t tell you when they do feel something during the procedure because they don’t want another shot. The response I am getting with my patients is that they never feel any part of their procedure during the visit. If a particular treatment is not traumatic, and the restoration is done well, then there isn’t much follow up with pain management.

What benefits to your practice have you seen since using DENTSPLY’s Anesthetic?
My big advantage in using Articadent is that there is less pain management afterward for the patient, and there is less patient management for me when they are in the chair. When the patients are profoundly numb, they can drift off and listen to music or whatever they are doing to distract themselves. I can just kind of work on what I need to do. It’s great.

Why would you recommend this product to your colleagues?
This anesthetic has changed how we do surgery, how much we can do at a time and how we go about it. It’s fantastic because if the patient is numb and not jumpy, you as the clinician have more confidence to go in and do what you need to do. Knowing my patients are really numb and comfortable makes me confident in proceeding with my work because there is less patient management and more just managing the procedure.
I do a lot of teaching and training of newer dentists, and I get to introduce them to the Articadent anesthetic. Many times they haven’t seen it before and it becomes a game changer for them, too.

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Important Risk Information:

• Refer to the full prescribing information on page 50 before using Articadent

• Do not use in patients with a known hypersensitivity to sulfite.

• Avoid intravascular injection

• Use with caution in patients with impaired cardiovascular function or vascular disease

• The most common adverse reactions are headache and pain.

• Articadent®, along with other local anesthetics, is capable of producing methemoglobinemia. The clinical signs of methemoglobinemia are cyanosis of the nail beds and lips, fatigue and weakness. If methemoglobinemia does not respond to administration of oxygen, administration of methylene blue intravenously 1-2 mg/kg body weight over a 5-minute period is recommended.

Featured Product

Articadent® (articaine HCI and epinephrine Injection, USP)

Articadent’s effectiveness for facilitating confident and consistent local anesthesia for dental treatment has made it one of the fastest growing brands seen in the U.S. Dental market, according to data as recent as SDM’s data from April 2014. The articane-based anesthetic is for use as a local, infiltrative, or conductive anesthesia for procedures ranging from simple to the more complex. Because it contains no natural rubber latex, it is also effective at reducing allergic reactions sometimes seen from patients.