Vitreoretinal surgical pain

The surgical eye nurse found that some patients undergoing vitreoretinal surgery experienced pain after the administration of local anesthesia. This study proposed to determine which local anesthesia technique provides the best comfort level for these patients. A quasi-experimental design, with a convenience sample of 41 patients and a 0-10 visual analog pain scale, was used to test the hypothesis. The findings did support the hypothesis that one particular local anesthesia technique was more significant than the others. However, this study also found that if the conjunctiva is sufficiently anaesthetized with 2% lidocaine jelly, patients experience no pain.