Irritancy after Surface Anesthesia

One generally has to distinguish between surface anesthesia, infiltration anesthesia and conduction anesthesia (Fromherz 1922 Schaumann 1938 Camougis Tak-man 1971). Special local tolerance tests have been developed for each of these applications including peridural and intrathecal injections. 

Camougis G, Takman BH (1971) Nerve and nerve-muscle preparations (as applied to local anesthetics) In Schwartz A (ed) Methods in Pharmacology, Vol 1, Appleton-Century-Crofts, Educational Division. Meredith Corp, New York, pp 1—40 

Fromherz K (1922) Uber die Wirkung verschiedener Grup-pen der Lokalanasthetika im Lichte verschiedener Un-tersuchungsmethoden. Naunyn-Schmiedeberg s Arch exp Path Pharmakol 93 72-91 

PURPOSE AND RATIONALE Surface anesthesia is used to anesthetize the cornea and conjunctiva of the eye and the mucous membranes in the mouth. The classical pharmacological test is the blockade of the rabbit corneal reflex as described by Regnier (1923) that has become a standard test method for evaluating local anesthetics (FuBganger and Schaumann 1931 Ther 1953a Quevauviller 1971 Muschaweck et al. 1986). These pharmacological methods are only partially suitable to determine the irritancy potential of local anesthetic on mucus membranes. Luduena et al. (1960) compared the mucus membrane irritancy of mepivacaine and lidocaine by the eye irritation method according to Hoppe (1950) and Draize et al. (1944). 

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