Hadzic's Regional Anesthesia > Part III. Clinical Practice of Regional Anesthesia > Section Four. Blocks of the Head & Neck > Chapter 20. Oral & Maxillofacial Regional Anesthesia Benaifer D. Dubash, DMD, Adam T. Hershkin, DMD, Paul J. Seider, DMD, Gregory M. Casey, DDS

Oral & Maxillofacial Regional Anesthesia: Introduction

"Oral surgical and dental procedures are routinely performed in an outpatient setting. Regional anesthesia is the most common method of anesthetizing the patient before office-based procedures. Many techniques can be used to achieve anesthesia of the dentition and surrounding hard and soft tissues of the maxilla and mandible. The type of procedure to be performed as well as the location of the procedure determines the technique of anesthesia to be used. Orofacial anesthetic techniques can be classified into three main categories: local infiltration, field block, and nerve block.Anesthesia of the teeth and soft and hard tissues of the oral cavity cannot be achieved without knowledge of the trigeminal nerve (fifth cranial nerve) and its branches. Regional, field, and local anesthesia of the maxilla and mandible depend on the deposition of anesthetic solution near terminal nerve branches or a main nerve trunk of the trigeminal nerve...."