Author/Authors :
Kamalipour, H Department of Anesthesiology - Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz , Ahmadi, S Department of Anesthesiology - Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz
Abstract :
Background: Traditionally, pain has been thought to be an unfortunate but inevitable part of
disease and its treatment. Pain associated with medical procedures was ignored because it was
thought to be unavoidable. The question of why physicians should treat pain is as important as
the knowledge of preventing it, since it is a right measure to take.
Objective: This study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of lidocaine iontophoresis
with that of local infiltration of lidocaine for the prevention and reduction of pain during radial
artery cannulation, in patients undergoing open heart surgery.
Methods: The present study comprised 60 adult patients, 36 males and 24 females, aged from
29 to 84 years with a median age of 63.8 (±10.35 SD) and 65.4 (10.48±SD) for groups 1 and 2,
respectively. The patients underwent elective open-heart surgery in Nemazee Hospital affiliated
to Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. Prior to induction of general anesthesia, patients were
randomly allocated to one of two groups for analgesia prior to radial artery cannulation on an
alternate week basis. Group 1 (n=30) patients received one-week analgesia using lidocaine iontophoresis,
and analgesia in Group 2 (n=30) was performed using lidocaine infiltration the following
week. Both groups were similar in terms of gender distribution.
Results: The VAS scores in group 1 were significantly lower than group 2 with no significant
difference in the difficulty of cannulations between the two groups. There was no complaint of
pain from patients during iontophoresis, and no report of any significant side effects. Slight skin
erythma was noted after removal of the iontophoretic anode patch in 4 patients, which lasted for
about 0.5-4 hours.
Conclusion: This study has demonstrated that lidocaine iontophoresis is a useful, non-invasive,
rapid, painless alternative to lidocaine infiltration for dermal analgesia for radial artery cannulation.
Keywords :
Open heart surgery , Radial artery cannulation , Pain relief , Lidocaine Iontophoresis , Lidocaine
