Opioid treatment for postoperative pain has long been an integral part of treatment following oral surgery. Although very useful and well tolerated by many people, these medications come with their own issues. Before recently we did not have a lot of options for those patients who wanted to avoid post-operative opioid medication use. With the advent of Exparel, a local anesthetic specially formulated to provide pain relief for up to 3 days following the surgery, WE NOW HAVE OPTIONS!
I am often faced with a myriad of situations for which patients would like to minimize the use of post-operative narcotics. There is the patient who would like to return to work earlier with a clear head, or the student who needs to get back to the books for an exam. Believe it or not there are those patients for whom narcotic medications do not even work, and some patients who just cannot tolerate the side effects. If you are one of these patients, then we have an answer for you.
Exparel is administered at the time of surgery along with other traditional local anesthetics, and then the surgery is completed as usual. The anesthetic has a special structure that prevents it from diffusing away from the surgical site, and allows it to be metabolized slowly over time. The result is a constant level of anesthesia at the surgical site that lasts days, allowing you to avoid those times when the pain is at its highest level. For many patients this can allow us to avoid opioids altogether.
Contact us today, for more information on narcotic-free recovery from wisdom tooth extraction and other oral surgery procedures.