The Role of Chloroprocaine as a Local Anesthetic: A Case Report

The use of local anesthetic is vital to a patient’s tolerance of outpatient therapeutic injections. There are many types of local anesthetics, however each inhibit pain signals by blocking voltage gated sodium channels in pain nerve fibers (Taylor & McLeod, 2020). Decreased efficacy of local anesthetic can be caused by many factors such as the anxiety and stress level of the patient, localized infection, and poor administration technique (Bhattacharya, 2011). Another factor that may contribute to reduced efficacy of local anesthetic is hair color. A few studies have indicated that female redheads differ from their dark-haired counterparts in terms of their anesthetic tolerance. Similarly, we observed in clinic female redheads that failed to respond to a specific local anesthetic, lidocaine. However, they did respond to another local anesthetic, chloroprocaine.