Have there been major improvements in dental anesthetics in the past few decades?

I got ether as a child and had the worst 'bad trip" ever. I was traumatized and still remember that day

I used to work with another pharmacist (RIP Ed; he died a couple years ago, aged 80) who had his appendix out when he was 13. Afterwards, he had to give up his hobby of assmebling balsa-wood model airplanes, because the glue had ether in it.

(And that’s where the ether-sniffing trope came from.)