TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Local Anesthesia A1 - Supino, Mark A1 - Yousef, Daniel A2 - Reichman, Eric F. PY - 2018 T2 - Reichman's Emergency Medicine Procedures, 3e AB - Modern medicine can trace the use of local anesthetics back to the year 1884 when the Austrian Physician Karl Koller first used topical cocaine to assist with an ophthalmologic operation.1 The premier Surgeon William Halstead first used injected cocaine to generate the intentional blockade of nerve transmission the following year.2 Halsted’s experiments with cocaine soon led to a concurrent dependency.3 The emerging illicit market for this compound soon prompted the search for a less toxic agent.3 Procaine, more commonly known by its trade name Novocain, was the first synthetic local anesthetic. It is a benzoic acid ester derivative developed by the German chemist Alfred Einhorn in 1904. Procaine had fewer drawbacks than its cocaine predecessor but was far from the ideal agent. Lidocaine was the first amide local anesthetic agent and was initially produced in 1945. The market for more effective agents continued to blossom. No less than 20 additional agents were developed for use as local anesthetics, each possessing unique pharmacokinetic properties to tailor its utility to specific clinical applications. They are all synthetic derivatives of cocaine. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/11/06 UR - accessemergencymedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1159805156 ER -