Sir, practising dentistry in this age of acronym inflation, clinical governance and endless box-ticking, it is tempting to feel sympathy for colleagues who express doubts as to the extent to which the public are safeguarded by our diligence. Noting, in patient records, the batch numbers and expiry dates of many of the materials and medicaments that we use makes perfect sense. In the event of an adverse outcome or product recall, traceability is essential. In June this year my nurse and I were quite surprised to find a substantial foreign body suspended within an unused cartridge of local anaesthetic which I was about to remove from its packaging to load in to a syringe. Figure 1 clearly shows the black solid, which was loose within the cartridge.

Figure 1
figure 1

The black solid in the local anaesthetic cartridge

Full size image

After contacting the manufacturers, a representative collected the cartridge and indicated that this was an extremely rare occurrence, though she had 'never seen one that big before!' I was reassured that the rest of the batch was safe to use. Through contacting the BDJ about a lack of any further response, I have eventually received an apology from the manufacturers as well as a rather technically worded report as to how improvements to quality control mechanisms introduced at the beginning of 2009 should have prevented this from happening, but did not.

While I accept the company's assurance I still remain less than impressed by their response. However, I think it more important to alert colleagues to this unusual circumstance and suggest that they check their stock for: Septanest Articaine 4% with 1:100,000 epinephrine 2.2 ml, Batch 03806, Expiry 2011/05.