Prilocaine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Prilocaine is a medicine sold in the U.S. under one brand. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Available as
- Injectable
- Sold as
- Citanest Plain Dental
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
Every prilocaine product we track (1)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
Only one: Citanest Plain Dental.
Combination products containing prilocaine
A combination is a different drug — different dosing, different warnings. It is listed here so you can find it, not so you can substitute it.
Prilocaine and breastfeeding
From LactMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s Drugs and Lactation Database — quoted, not rewritten.
Full LactMed record for prilocaine: levels in milk, effects in breastfed infants, and the drugs it would consider insteadNo information is available on the use of prilocaine during breastfeeding. Based on the low excretion of other local anesthetics into breastmilk, a single dose of prilocaine injected during breastfeeding, such as for a dental procedure, is unlikely to adversely affect the breastfed infant. However, an alternate drug may be preferred, especially while nursing a newborn or preterm infant. Topical application of prilocaine to the mother is unlikely to affect her breastfed infant if it is applied away from the breast. Only water-miscible cream or gel products should be applied to the breast because ointments may expose the infant to high levels of mineral paraffins via licking.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, record revised November 16, 2020. LactMed states its information is not a substitute for professional judgement.
What people report to the FDA about prilocaine
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 347 reports naming prilocaine, and the FDA flagged 72% of those reports as serious. The effects reported most often — leaving out reports about overdose, misuse or the condition being treated, which dominate the raw list for common medicines:
- nausea28 reports
- fatigue24 reports
- diarrhoea20 reports
- pyrexia19 reports
- weight increased18 reports
- cough17 reports
- necrotising fasciitis17 reports
- covid-1916 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean prilocaine caused the effect — anyone can file one, and many describe people taking several medicines for several conditions. Crucially there is no denominator: FAERS does not record how many people took the drug, so these counts cannot be turned into “X% of patients” — a bigger number often just means a more widely used or more talked-about drug. Duplicates exist, and publicity drives reporting. For what is actually established, read the FDA label section above.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved July 26, 2026.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
Can you take prilocaine with other medicines?
It depends on the medicine. We check it against the FDA labels rather than guessing: our interaction checker searches each drug's own label for the other and quotes what it says, naming the section it came from. Run prilocaine against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
What forms does prilocaine come in?
Across the brands we track, prilocaine is currently marketed as injectable, per the FDA's National Drug Code Directory. Each form is dosed differently — follow the label for the exact product you were prescribed.
Is there a generic prilocaine?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled prilocaine product. That does not always mean none exists — it means none appears under a generic name in the FDA data we track. Ask your pharmacist.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Prilocaine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/prilocaine
- MLA
- “Prilocaine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/prilocaine.
We summarise public FDA and NIH sources — for a clinical claim, cite the primary source we link to as well.
Sources: FDA openFDA drug label, National Drug Code Directory, and Enforcement (recall) database. This page reproduces public FDA data and is not medical advice. Dosing is set by your prescriber.
Read the full FDA label for prilocaine on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.