Abstract

It has been postulated that local anesthetic administration may be the most painful part of interventional spine procedures. Despite this, there is a lack of evidence supporting the commonly used traditional technique of anesthetic delivery as part of these procedures. This study tested three hypotheses: 1) alternative method of local anesthesia injection is superior to the traditional method; 2) using the traditional method of injection is not superior to using no local anesthetic; and 3) treatment needle size, anesthetic injection technique, and sedation are associated with pain experienced during procedures.Prospective, multicenter clinical trial of 127 participants who underwent elective bilateral symmetric interventional spine procedures in outpatient spine clinics.Primary outcomes were pain scores during and after procedures to examine the influence of anesthetic injection method and treatment needle gauge on pain experience using linear mixed model regression analysis. A post-hoc comparison of estimated marginal mean pain scores was completed on both anesthetic injection method and treatment needle gauge.The alternative method was superior (P?

View details for DOI 10.1093/pm/pnv015

View details for Web of Science ID 000373731300007