Evaluating Clinical Outcomes for Determining the OptimalDelay to Skin Incision under WALANT: A Prospective Series of 34Patients from a Low-Resource Tertiary Setting

Additional studies on clinical outcomes to determine the optimal time delay from injection of local anesthesia to skinincision for WALANT surgeries are needed. &e authors aimed to propose the optimal time delay from local injection to skinincision for WALANT surgeries of the hand and wrist by analyzing intraoperative blood loss, postoperative pain scores, andcomplication rates.Methods. &irty-four patients were consecutively recruited and allocated by either 7-min or 30-min delay forskin incision from local injection of epinephrine with lidocaine. Intraoperative bleeding and postoperative pain scores wereanalyzed between both groups by Mann–WhitneyU-test, while complication rates were compared using Fisher’s exact test.Results. &e present study did not find significant differences in mean intraoperative blood loss (8±5.8 mL vs. 5±2.2 mL,p�0.074), complication rates (18% vs. 0%,p�0.227), and mean pain scores (1.2±0.5 vs.1.4±0.5,p�0.307) between the 7-minand 30-min groups.Conclusion. &e authors conclude that a waiting time of 7 min from the injection of local anesthesia issufficient to achieve comparable clinical outcomes for minor hand and wrist surgeries under WALANT.