Misuse of acetaminophen in the management of dental pain

We propose that even patients with mild clinical symptoms with a supposed ingested dose of acetaminophen greater than 150 mg/kg/24 h should be referred to an emergency department and that liver enzyme activity should be analyzed. No case of liver failure was observed during our short survey. However, hepatotoxicity of repeated supratherapeutic ingestion of acetaminophen was suspected in four patients. Patients and practitioners should thus be better informed about the risk of unintentional acetaminophen overdose following supratherapeutic acetaminophen ingestion.