Abstract
We performed a dental treatment for a 5-year-old patient with an anamnesis of secondary methemoglobinemia at his age of 6 months. This may have been caused by PL granules. Though local anesthesia was required for the treatment, amide typed local anesthetic agents such as prilocaine and lidocaine are known to cause methemoglobinemia. During the treatment we thus checked his blood methomoglobin concentrations before and after local anesthesia (1.8ml lidocaine) to examine a possible causal relationship between lidocaine and increased blood methemoglobin levels. We used an autographic spectrum photometer (UV-265 from SHIMAZU) to determine the methemoglobin concentration in accordance with a revised Evelyn-Malloy method.
As a result, we found no significant rise in the blood methemoglobin concentration at the dose level of lidocaine employed in this case.
