Some materials and medications used at the dentist office can cause an allergic reaction.

Who hasn’t experienced at some point fear of the dentist? Let’s be honest, we all have a strange love-hate relationship with them.

The ideal scenario is a regular visit that ends with no cavities, but there’s also that rush appointment when you can’t ignore the pain anymore. The last is a more difficult time and usually involves anesthesia, syringes, gloves, masks, tubes, gauze etc.

To achieve the end result of a beautiful and happy smile, we have done a bit of investigation and found that some materials and medications used at the dentist office can cause you an allergic reaction. Let’s list a few and find out how the allergist can help you.

• Local anesthetics: adverse reactions can go from toxicity reaction for amid-type such as lidocaine to allergic reaction for ester-type anesthetic. Ask the allergist for drug testing.
• Codeine: it usually causes non-allergic intestinal reactions, unless symptoms like swelling of the lips, skin reactions, or breathing difficulties appear.
• Latex: Symptoms range from minor skin irritation to life-threatening anaphylaxis reaction. Ask the allergist for patch test.
• Penicillin: Signs and symptoms of penicillin allergy often occur within an hour after taking a drug. Less commonly, reactions can occur hours, days or weeks later. Make an appointment for skin testing and/or oral challenge.

Many materials used can cause reactions to the oral tissue.

• Someone allergic to shellfish should be watchful for a material called alginate, which is typically used for impressions.
• Stomatitis and contact dermatitis can be caused by some composite resins, eugenol (used in temporary filling), amalgam among others.
• A new item on the list is your mouthwash. An alarming increased number of anaphylaxis shock and allergic reactions to skin antiseptics containing “chlorhexidine gluconate” has been reported, which has forced the FDA to issue a safety warning

“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning that rare but serious allergic reactions have been reported with the widely used skin antiseptic products containing chlorhexidine gluconate. Although rare, the number of reports of serious allergic reactions to these products has increased over the last several years. As a result, we are requesting the manufacturers of over-the-counter (OTC) antiseptic products containing chlorhexidine gluconate to add a warning about this risk to the Drug Facts labels.”

• Read the labels, remember the name of the ingredient or your allergen, consider avoiding over the counter products and if you suspect you could be allergic, always consult a board certified allergist.