Debatable evidence for the adverse drug reactions to local anaesthetics.

DATA SOURCES: Medline, Embase, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure VIP Database for Chinese Technical Periodicals (and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database.

STUDY SELECTION: Randomised controlled trials (RCTs), non-RCTs, case-control studies, case reports, case series and cross-sectional studies that focused on adverse drug reactions of local anaesthetics were considered.

DATA EXTRACTION AND SYNTHESIS: Data abstraction was conducted independently by two reviewers, and summary data and a meta-analysis presented.

RESULTS

One hundred and one studies reporting 1645 events were included. Seven of these were deaths. Lidocaine (43.17%) and bupivacaine (16.32%) were the most often involved local anaesthetics. According to the meta-analysis, the risk of using LA alone was lower than when combined with epinephrine.

CONCLUSIONS

The present study demonstrated that the adverse drug reactions of local anaesthetics could not be ignored, especially in oral and ophthalmologic treatments. Some adverse drug reactions could be avoided by properly evaluating the conditions of patients and correctly applying local anaesthetics.