‘I learnt about Dentistry from that’

I am a final year student at a UK dental school. I was in our oral surgery clinic having already seen a patient prior to the one with whom this incident took place. The previous patient had been a particularly stressful surgical extraction of an UL8 which had left me exhausted and pressured for time.

As a result, I quickly bundled in the next patient (XLA of a LR6), took the appropriate history, presented it to my tutor and was ready to crack on. Having identified the relevant landmarks for my ID block, I was about to inject when one of the oral surgery nurses passing by stopped me and shouted: “IS THAT LIDOCAINE?”. I paused “ARE YOU SURE THAT IS LIDOCAINE?”. Slowly I put down the LA needle and removed the cartridge. It said Articaine.

I had asked my clinical partner for a cartridge of lidocaine when I was setting up for the extraction. As he handed me the cartridge, I had inserted it into the chamber without bothering to check that it was indeed lidocaine that I was injecting. It taught me a great lesson always to check what solutions I am administering and never to assume that others have checked for me. I'm glad it happened before I had performed the block and, whilst articaine is still used in some countries for IDBs, it is most definitely contra-indicated for these at my dental school.