Local anesthesia is any technique to induce the absence of sensation in part of the body, generally for the aim of inducing local analgesia, that is, local insensitivity to pain, although other local senses may be affected as well. It allows patients to undergo surgical and dental procedures with reduced pain and distress. In many situations, such as cesarean section, it is safer and therefore superior to general anesthesia. It is also used for relief of non-surgical pain and to enable diagnosis of the cause of some chronic pain conditions. Anesthetists sometimes combine both general and local anesthesia techniques.
The following terms are often used interchangeably:
- Local anesthesia, in a strict sense, is anesthesia of a small part of the body such as a tooth or an area of skin.
- Regional anesthesia is aimed at anesthetizing a larger part of the body such as a leg or arm.
- Conduction anesthesia is a comprehensive term, which encompasses a great variety of local and regional anesthetic techniques.
Read more about Local Anesthesia: Medical, Non-medical Local Anesthetic Techniques
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“In everyone’s youthful dreams, philosophy is still vaguely but inseparably, and with singular truth, associated with the East, nor do after years discover its local habitation in the Western world. In comparison with the philosophers of the East, we may say that modern Europe has yet given birth to none.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)