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Tip for Dental Injection Pain

C

CJRUSS

Junior member
Joined
Dec 10, 2021
Messages
1
Location
AZ
Dental injections hurt. I mean, seriously hurt. I'd rather break my ankle again than to have even 1 injection. Long story short, after an upper molar abscess that required 3 root canals (Endo drilled into the abscess - no anesthesia), dental procedures and injections cause me to cry and panic even more than before. My phobia and panic recovery time has increased exponentially. Imagine my dread when the new Dentist said I'm sorry but the crown (on the root canal) wasn't placed properly AND that caused a cavity in the upper back molar. So I needed TWO crowns.

God bless this poor Dentist. It was my first visit with him and I freaked out. He was so patient and told me that he would use a short acting anesthesia called Citanest for the first injections. He said it has a pH closer to the human body and doesn't hurt as much as Novocain. Well, I bawled and moaned during those first injections. BUT he was right, the Citanest didn't hurt as bad. In fact, think I was crying more for the anticipation of pain rather than actual pain. Then after that took effect, he gave the Novocain injections. I didn't feel a thing - WHEW!

So the tip is if you have not had the Citanest anesthetic, ask your Dentist to use it for the initial numbing. I still felt the needle sting but the slow injection of the Citanest was not terrible. I think I could bear it without a bucket of tears if there is a next time, God forbid!
 
Glad it was a much better experience! I had such a horrible experience with dental injections when I was a kid and young adult. Even as an adult they were bad but at least they use a topical numbing on the gums first now.
This past year, I had my first injection that barely hurt. Like you said, you could feel the initial pinch a little but it didn’t hurt going in. My new oral surgeon does them really, really slowly and it makes a huge difference!
 
Hi and thanks for sharing your tip! Really sorry to hear that you’ve had such bad experiences with dental injections in the past ?. I suppose that I’ve been lucky, not having had any painful injections (though plenty of bad dental experiences otherwise).

A lot of it is down to the skill of the individual dentist (as well as the injection site), and thankfully, many dentists are keenly aware of the things it takes to give an injection as gently as possible. We’ve got a page on this topic here:


Sounds like you’ve managed to find a good dentist- it’s very unlikely that you’ll have any problems with the same person in the future ? (citanest plain or not!)
 
Hello, I'm more afraid than the anesthesia itself that I might be allergic or accidentally put it in a blood vessel and all sorts of other scary things that are probably extremely rare but still enough for a person with fear. Today they took out 2 teeth with local anesthesia and I can say that the injection is not as scary as I thought(i have a big fear from needles) and when i had a blood test i fainted. I was injected today 3 times, 2 times in the palate there was a little more painful but nothing special 2/10 for me my dentist put it very quickly, I was very scared, but nothing bad happened! I have one bad experience a long ago. I had local anaesthesia for my lower wisdom tooth and dentist was young and new and working slowly (i dont judge him) and he injected me so slowly and i feel the needle and i got very scared from then. But i found oral surgeon who practice for a long time and he is amazing i think im not scared from injections anymore (he dont use any numbing gel before injecting and it was fine) Im happy for you for that you have a better experience
 
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