“How to deal with negative side effects of dental anesthetic?”
After I swallowed a large quantity of dental anesthetic during dental treatment, I have experienced severe eye pain, very blurred vision, dizziness, lightheadedness, short term memory loss, and orange-colored eye discharge. What should I do? The dentist tried to downplay the problem and said lidocaine is not toxic. Please help.
Female | 61 years old
Medications: None
Conditions: None.
4 Answers
AnesthesiologistDentistAnesthesiologist
Lidocaine can be toxic if blood levels rise to high levels. It is unlikely that an oral dose would be toxic. Anxiety can confuse the picture and should be considered.
I doubt that your symptoms were all caused by anesthetics. Ask an anesthesiologist to review your dental treatment. Unfortunately, some dentists give patients anesthetics after very little training.
Dentist injects the local anesthetic into the nerve roots in certain areas in small quantities. I don’t believe you would have swallowed anything but maybe a drop or two at the most. The eyes problems sounds like you may have gotten some foreign substance in them. If your dentist was drilling your teeth and you didn’t take precautions to keep your eyes closed, you may have some of the aerosolized spray into you eyes and caused scratches on your cornea. Corneal abrasions are painful and may cause discharge if not properly cared for. The lightheadedness, blurred vision, and dizziness may be associated with your eyes problem. As for the memory problem, it may be due to pain.
Yi-Hwa Outerbridge, MD
Yi-Hwa Outerbridge, MD
First, I would have to know what you swallowed. Your side effects do sound unusual, so I would have to know details of the procedure and anesthetic. There are several possibilities for anesthetics and they could possibly interact with any meds you are taking, if any.
