Alabama medicine : journal of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Towards less painful local anesthesia.
Local anesthesia, used for numerous procedures in all fields of medicine, has the drawback of providing significant pain upon injection. Twenty-eight volunteers were asked to compare a subcutaneous injection of plain lidocaine with an injection of lidocaine plus bicarbonate. Twenty-four of the twenty-eight volunteers reported less pain with the buffered lidocaine. ⋯ There are numerous factors that have been shown to influence the pain of injection. These include speed of injection, size of needle used, area of the body injected, and simply individual patient characteristics. Since lidocaine comes as an acid solution, local tissue irritation is likely the primary source of pain.