OBJECTIVES There is no consensus on the most effective pain management for neonatal circumcision. We sought to compare different modalities. METHODS This is a double-blinded randomized controlled trial comparing 3 combination analgesics used during circumcision (EMLA + sucrose; EMLA + sucrose + dorsal penile nerve block [DPNB]; EMLA + sucrose + ring block [RB]) with the traditional topical an...

OBJECTIVE Patients undergoing hemodialysis are repeatedly exposed to stress and pain from approximately 300 punctures per year to their arteriovenous fistula. This study was designed to measure pain associated with venepuncture during AVF cannulation and to compare the effectiveness of ethyl chloride vapocoolant spray, topical eutectic mixture of local anesthetics (EMLA) cream and placebo in co...

OBJECTIVE Neonates routinely undergo painful cutaneous procedures as part of their medical treatment. Lidocaine-prilocaine 5% cream (EMLA) is a topical anesthetic that may be useful for diminishing the pain from these procedures. EMLA is routinely used in children and adults. There is substantial apprehension about its use in neonates because of concerns that it may cause methemoglobinemia. The...

Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) has been reliably accurate as a minimally invasive surgical alternative for identifying lymphatic breast metastasis. During mapping, the injection of a radioactive tracer or isosulfan blue dye to differentiate the SLN is acutely painful. The use of the eutectic mixture of lidocaine and prilocaine (EMLA) cream to reduce tracer injection pain has been reported an...

Capsaicin, which has been studied extensively as a treatment for itch and several chronic pain disorders, induces burning during the first week of therapy, causing a substantial percentage of patients to discontinue treatment prematurely. We examined whether pre-treatment with the topical anesthetic EMLA reduces the burning sensation induced by capsaicin and alters capsaicin effects on thermal ...

In a double-blind, double-dummy study, the efficacy of topical 5% EMLA cream was compared with that of lignocaine infiltration in alleviating the pain of arterial cannulation. Forty unpremedicated adults were allocated randomly to four groups to receive EMLA cream alone, EMLA and 0.9% saline infiltration, EMLA and 1% lignocaine infiltration or placebo cream and 1% lignocaine infiltration. Follo...

BACKGROUND Topical analgesia is becoming essential as the number of invasive screening procedures involving children rises steadily. Little is known about the frequency of these procedures, or about interventions to ease the pain. METHODS We investigated the use of EMLA cream in 184 school-aged children in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. Another group of 20 children did not receive any ...

OBJECTIVES To compare analgesic efficacy and pain caused by administration of lidocaine/prilocaine cream (EMLA(R)) versus xylocaine 1% local infiltration for punch biopsy and electrocoagulation of genital warts in men. DESIGN Open randomised comparative parallel-group study. SETTING Department of Dermatovenereology, University Hospital Rotterdam/Dijkzigt, the Netherlands. PATIENTS 63 male...

OBJECTIVE To demonstrate that parent application of eutectic mixture of local anesthetics (EMLA) results in equal reduction of the pain of intravenous (IV) placement compared with clinician application of EMLA, and to assess potential difficulties with parental application. STUDY DESIGN A 2 x 2 randomized block design was used, with 41 children divided into two age groups (5-12 years vs 13-18...

The efficacy of a topical anaesthetic formulation, EMLA 5% cream (Eutectic Mixture of Local Anaesthetics) in obtunding the pain produced by venepuncture, was determined in a double-blind randomized, cross-over study in 31 adult volunteers. Pain was registered on a 10-cm visual analogue scale. In each subject the mean pain score after treatment with EMLA was compared with that following placebo....