Emergency preparedness includes airway management equipment and skills, ACLS drugs and skills and antiseizure medications. Great care should be exercised when sedating patients in conjunction with local anesthesia. Specific Techniques Specific techniques of local anesthesia include topical application, local infiltration, field blocks, and regional blocks. Local anesthetics can be applied by syringe, spray or pledgets. They are commonly used with neosynephrine or other vasoconstricting agent.
Cocaine is the only local anesthetic which also has vasoconstrictive properties.
However, it is not approved by the FDA and must be prepared by the administering physician or local pharmacy. Local infiltration and field blocks can be utilized for limited procedures in the head and neck, especially those involving the face, ear, nose and neck. Procedures such as laceration repairs, excisional biopsies, most nasal procedures, and tracheotomies are particularly amenable to this technique. Regional blocks provide larger areas of anesthesia by anesthetizing peripheral nerves more proximally at known, consistent anatomic locations, eg. These blocks are numerous and very useful.