Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2016
This study compared the pain associated with the intratympanic injection combined with various local anaesthetics vs without anaesthesia.
The study included 40 patients (aged 18–78 years) who received intratympanic steroid injections for sudden idiopathic hearing loss or tinnitus. Each patient underwent all three injection methods at one-week intervals. Patients received one of two local anaesthetics (lidocaine injection or lidocaine spray) or no anaesthesia before intratympanic injection, and used a visual analogue scale to indicate the pain level after 5 and 45 minutes.
Five minutes after injection, patients who did not receive anaesthesia and those who received lidocaine spray reported lower pain scores than those who received a lidocaine injection (p < 0.05). There was no difference in pain scores for all three methods at 45 minutes after intratympanic injection.
Neither of the local anaesthetics was found to be superior to having no anaesthesia.