Yeah, the sulfite is there only to stop the epinephrine from breaking down; the lidocaine itself is pretty stable.
I treated a woman who had 12 crowns (caps) in her mouth. Her dentist had retired and she came to me because she had broken a tooth.
When I told her she needed a crown she started to cry. She said she just couldn’t go thru that pain again! What pain? I asked, since we always gave lidocaine whenever drilling was necessary. “But I’m allergic to it!” She yelled…and then it hit me: her idiot of a dentist NEVER knew that the “allergy” was a reaction to the sulfite additive, not the lidocaine itself.
I told her I would give her lidocaine that would not make her ill.
When I explained this to her she was elated, but her mood quickly turned dark…”That sonofabitch did all these crowns with nothing!! I screamed the whole effing time!!!”
True story… he had the biggest practice on the entire North Fork of Long Island and didn’t know diddly squat…
A lesson to be learned for all men visiting prostate “specialists” of any kind!