PRODUCT:
Profound Lite

SOURCE:
Steven’s Pharmacy
Costa Mesa, Calif.
1-800-352-DRUG

Since I switched to Profound Lite, I no longer see the tissue dehydration I did before, and the patients still don’t feel the penetration of the needle. It is an incredibly strong topical anesthetic.

I have written before about how Profound has allowed me to do lots of gingival recontouring and other soft tissue procedures without the need for local anesthesia. Profound has also allowed me to almost entirely eliminate lower blocks from my day-to-day practice. I noticed that I could squirt it into the furcation of a lower molar, wait 60 seconds, and then slowly inject one-half to two-thirds of a Septocaine^® (Septodont; New Castle, Del.) carpule into the furcation and achieve instant pulpal anesthesia without any tongue or cheek numbness.

I became a hero to my patients for avoiding painful blocks and not numbing half of their lower jaw for three hours!

Like many dentists, I began to use Profound for many more clinical uses, as well as in my hygiene rooms. When I began using it in the vestibule as a pre-injection topical, I noticed that the patients felt no pain at all! My technique is to leave the Profound on for 60 seconds, rinse it off, and then pierce the mucosa with the 30-gauge needle as I pull the tissue taut. They simply do not feel the needle anymore!

However, I also noticed that if I didn’t rinse it off completely, some patients would experience a dehydration of the tissue that would result in a white patch on the tissue. I called the pharmacy to talk about this reaction and they were surprised to hear that I was using it in the vestibule.

The strength of Profound had been based on doing laser surgery without a local, not as a pre-injection topical. So with dentists like me in mind, they formulated Profound Lite. For those of us who use it more for pre-injections than for laser surgery, it still has the same powerful combination of prilocaine, lidocaine and tetracaine as Profound, but the ratios have been adjusted to make it friendly to all oral tissues.

Since I switched to Profound Lite, I no longer see the tissue dehydration that I did before, and the patients still don’t feel the penetration of the needle. I keep a tube of original Profound in each operatory for the gingival recontouring touch-ups that seem to pop up in almost all of our esthetic cases. My dental assistant also uses it on the lingual tissue when the patient can feel the cord packing as we prefer not to give palatal injections if we can avoid it.

Profound and Profound Lite are both available in 30 or 45 gram tubes. My staff then dispenses some of the topical into Ultradent syringes with disposable 18-gauge tips for injecting into molar furca and gingival sulci. The rest of the topical stays in the original tube to be dispensed onto cotton-tipped applicators for use as a pre-injection topical.

Do yourself (and your patients!) a favor by using Profound Lite to drop the pain from your injection technique!