The Effect of 30 Min Pre-treatment with Continuous Lidocaine Infusion on Propofol-induced Pain

Kim, Bong Il; Park, Chan Hong; Lee, Jun Suk

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Pain on injection is one of the major disadvantages of propofol. To solve this problem, many investigations have been done. We postulated that the duration of pre-treatment of local anesthetics might affect the incidence and nature of injection pain.
METHODS
Seventy seven patients were involved in our study. They were divided into control group (group C, n = 25); pre-treatment with normal saline and study group (n = 52); pre-treatment with 0.1% lidocaine 1 ml/kg/h for 30 min before propofol injection. The study group was subdivided into 2 groups, one receiving maintenance fluid (group LF, n = 28) and one not (group LS, n = 24). A vein on the dorsum of the hand was used for the intravenous line in all patients. Pain assessment was made twice, immediately after injection of first half dose of propofol and after injection of the remaining half dose. The speed of propofol injection was 0.5 ml/sec. After measuring pain with the visual analogue scale (VAS) and pain scoring (PS) during propofol injection, the highest score in each case was used for comparison.
RESULTS
The values of VAS and PS of group LF were not different from group C. However the corresponding values of group LS were lower than those of group C (P<0.05).
CONCLUSIONS
From our results, it can be suggested that the duration of 30 min pre-treatment of lidocaine without maintenance fluid is one method for reducing the incidence and nature of pain induced by propofol.