When receiving dental treatment, such as fillings or extractions, local anesthesia is often used to numb the area being worked on. There are two main types of local anesthesia injections that dentists typically use: infiltration injections and block injections.
Infiltration injections are given directly into the tissue surrounding the tooth or teeth being treated. Block injections are given further away from the treatment area, in a nerve trunk that supplies sensation to the area. Both types of injections are effective at providing local anesthesia, but block injections typically provide a longer duration of anesthesia and are used for more extensive procedures.