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A new needle-free device that delivers a local anaesthetic to the skin promises to help make delivering drugs and drawing blood less painful for children.
The system involves a sterile, pre-filled, disposable device that dispenses lidocaine powder into the epidermis, the cells that make up the outer layer of the skin, lead author Dr William T. Kempsky, from the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and Connecticut Children's Medical Centre in Hartford, and colleagues said.
In the study, investigators randomly assigned a group of children to the powder lidocaine system or to a sham placebo system one to three minutes before medical procedures.
The use of the lidocaine system provided rapid and significant analgesia relative to the sham system, based on standard pain scale scores. Parental ratings of pain were also significantly lower with the lidocaine system, the researchers reported in the journal Pediatrics.
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