What Should I Expect from This Procedure?

The intravenous lidocaine infusion is used to assess the potential benefits of lidocaine and related medications on managing your pain. Depending on the specific cause of your pain, some patients report immediate and long continued relief associated with the intravenous administration of lidocaine. Other patients with different reasons for their pain indicate that their pain relief is slow in coming on and may last only as long as the medication is being infused.

Yet another group of patients receiving the intravenous lidocaine describe some unpleasant or non-beneficial response from the lidocaine. However, prior to the performance of the procedure, your physicians have no way of identifying to which group you may belong.

If you noted significant improvement in your pain or change in the way your pain feels during the course of the infusion, your evaluating physicians request that you pay special attention to how long the beneficial effects of this medication last and report this to us either with a telephone call, after you leave the Pain Management Center, or at the time you are scheduled to see us next for further evaluation and/or treatment.