{"id":20919,"date":"2016-01-19T12:48:55","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T20:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/painless-electrical-zaps-may-replace-dental-anesthesia-needles"},"modified":"2017-06-04T20:15:29","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T03:15:29","slug":"painless-electrical-zaps-may-replace-dental-anesthesia-needles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/painless-electrical-zaps-may-replace-dental-anesthesia-needles","title":{"rendered":"Painless electrical zaps may replace dental anesthesia needles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\\'blog-photo\\' href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/painless-electrical-zaps-may-replace-dental-anesthesia-needles.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As much as some people fear getting dental fillings or root canals, what many of them are <em>really<\/em> afraid of is the needle that delivers the anesthetic into the mouth tissue. Even though the skin in the \u201cjabbing area\u201d is usually pretreated with a topical anesthetic, it can still hurt. Before long, however, a shot of electricity could make that topical treatment deep-acting enough that the needle isn\u2019t even needed.<\/p>\n<p>In a recent study, scientists from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil combined two commonly-used anesthetic drugs \u2013 prilocaine hydrochloride and lidocaine hydrochloride \u2013 with a polymer to form a hydrogel. The polymer was included to make it sticky, so that it could be applied to the lining of a pig\u2019s mouth.<\/p>\n<p>Using a process known as <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Iontophoresis\" target=\"_blank\">iontophoresis<\/a>, a mild and painless electrical current was then passed through the hydrogel. As a result, there was a 12-fold increase in how well the prilocaine hydrochloride permeated through the tissue. The anesthetic effect was claimed to be not only fast-acting, but also long-lasting.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gizmag.com\/iontophoretic-anesthetic\/41376\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As much as some people fear getting dental fillings or root canals, what many of them are really afraid of is the needle that delivers the anesthetic into the mouth tissue. Even though the skin in the \u201cjabbing area\u201d is usually pretreated with a topical anesthetic, it can still hurt. Before long, however, a shot [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20919"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68806,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20919\/revisions\/68806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}