Pain control is central to enabling clinicians to provide dental treatment and to reduce the suffering of patients. In the last century, there has been a tremendous increase in our understanding of pain and how it is mediated. This has progressively led to the availability of a wider range of techniques and drugs to minimise or eliminate pain.

This course examines these different techniques and drugs and allows the dentist to perform advanced local anaesthetic techniques.

Pain control is central to the practice of dentistry. No procedure in dentistry will earn your patient’s gratitude more than effectively controlling their pain.

Topics include...

• The physiology of pain
• The pharmacology and prescribing of analgesics in the dental office:
  • Paracetamol
  • NSAIDS
  • Opioids
• Local Anaesthesia:
  • Pharmacology
  • Anatomy
  • Complications
• Advanced Local Anaesthesia techniques:
  • (Higher) Inferior alveolar nerve block
  • Gow-Gates mandibular nerve block
  • Incisive (mental) nerve block
  • Akinosi-Vazirani mandibular nerve block
  • Infra-Orbital nerve block
• Use of the wand to allow the following techniques:
  • Anterior Middle Superior alveolar nerve block (AMSA)
  • Palatal approach to AMSA

Learning Objectives

• Understand how pain is transmitted throughout the body
• Understand how the different classes of analgesics work
• Understand how to prescribe analgesics appropriately
• Understand the pharmacology and local anaesthetics
• Appreciate how anatomical variations affect local anaesthesia
• Revise techniques to minimise patient discomfort during injections
• Learn and apply advanced local anaesthesia techniques.
• Gain experience with a computerised local anaesthesia administration system