Electronic Shifting Replay

On Sun, 21 Jul 2019 11:26:53 -0700 (PDT), Steve Weeks
wrote:

On Sunday, July 21, 2019 at 11:29:03 AM UTC-5, Tom Kunich wrote:

I can't even conceive of having a root canal without Novocain.

Fun Fact: "Novocaine" (generic: procaine) has not been used in dentistry for about 20-30 years. It is available in vials and ampules (used in medicine), but AFAIK it is not available in dental cartridges. The reasons are that procaine was not a particularly effective anesthetic (though better than nothing), and that allergies to it were common.
Current anesthetic used in dentistry include lidocaine, mepivacaine, prilocaine, bupivacaine and articaine. You can guess the identity of the prototype local anesthetic from the last syllable of all these... cocaine!
A particular pet peeve of mine is dentists using "Novocaine" as a synonym for "local anesthetic" because they think the patient understands it. If someone has an adverse reaction to, say, lidocaine but thinks it's Novocaine, they may tell me they have an allergy to Novocaine. This would not bother me, as I know that's not the anesthetic I'm using. Then I'd proceed to give an injection of lidocaine and have to deal with the consequences.

Given the first time I can remember having any serious dental work
done that required any form of anesthetic was the surgical extraction
of wisdom teeth which was probably 65 years ago and I've always called
it "Novocain" :-)
--

Cheers,

John B.