Methemoglobinemia Related to Local Anesthetics: A Summary of 242 Episodes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: The purpose of this article is to summarize all episodes of local anesthetic-related methemoglobinemia found in the medical literature. METHODS: I performed a search of the American National Library of Medicine's PubMed with the following key words: "local anesthetic" and "methemoglobinemia." RESULTS: Two-hundred-forty-two episodes (40.1% published in year 2000 or after) were found. Chocolate-colored blood suggests methemoglobinemia but other colors may be found. A discrepancy between the pulse oximeter saturation (< or = 90%) and the arterial oxygen partial pressure (> or = 70 mm Hg) was present in 91.8% of the episodes. The difference between oxygen saturation measured by pulse oximetry and co-oximetry varied from -6.2% to 44.7%. Plain prilocaine may induce clinically symptomatic methemoglobinemia in children older than 6 mo at doses exceeding 2.5 mg/kg. In adults, the dose of prilocaine should be kept lower than 5.0 mg/kg, which is reduced to 3.2 mg/kg in the presence of renal insufficiency and to 1.3 mg/kg if other oxidizing drugs are used concurrently. A single spray of benzocaine may induce methemoglobinemia. Clinical symptoms may be observed at relatively low methemoglobin values, including coma at 32.2 and 29.1% in children and adults, respectively. Rebound methemoglobinemia (benzocaine on mucous membranes) with methemoglobin values as high as 59.9% may occur up to 18 h after methylene blue administration. Complications of methemoglobinemia include hypoxic encephalopathy, myocardial infarction, and death. CONCLUSION: Benzocaine should no longer be used. Prilocaine should not be used in children younger than 6-mo-old, in pregnant women, or in patients taking other oxidizing drugs. The dose should be limited to 2.5 mg/kg.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.012 | 0.013 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".