Warming lignocaine reduces the pain of injection during local anaesthetic eyelid surgery

Abstract

The injection of local anaesthetic solutions is frequently a painful and unpleasant experience for patients. A double-masked randomised controlled trial was performed to study the potential benefit of warming lignocaine during local anaesthetic minor surgical procedures on the eyelids. The pain of subcutaneous injection of 1.5 ml of 2% lignocaine at room temperature (cold) and body temperature (warm) was compared in 60 patients during the surgical incision of solitary meibomian cysts of one eyelid. Patients were randomly allocated to receive either warm or cold lignocaine. Pain was assessed subjectively by the use of a linear analogue pain scale ranging from 0 to 100. The median pain score for the group receiving cold anaesthetic (19.5) was found to be greater than that for the warm group (10.0; p = 0.02). In conclusion, the simple process of warming lignocaine to 37°C was found to reduce the pain associated with its injection significantly. It is recommended that this technique be more widely adopted in order to minimise patients' discomfort.