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A mixture of lidocaine and prilocaine (EMLA) reduces the pain of needle sticks. Unfortunately, EMLA must be applied 60 minutes before a procedure. Investigators from Iowa conducted a randomized crossover study to test the effectiveness of a new local anesthetic -- ELA-Max -- that contains only lidocaine as an anesthetic agent and can be applied just 30 minutes before a procedure. Researchers enrolled 30 children (age range, 7 to 13 years): They applied EMLA to one hand and, 30 minutes later, applied ELA-Max to the other hand of each child; after another 30 minutes, the children underwent intravenous cannulation.
The median pain score on a validated pediatric pain scale (from 0 to 100) in the ELA-Max group was higher than the median score in …