Hyaluronidase: does it take out the sting in vitreoretinal patients?

The purpose of this study was to determine if adding hyaluronidase to the local anesthesia mixture would decrease or eliminate pain during vitreoretinal surgery. Patients having a reoperation of the vitreoretinal space experienced pain after the administration of local anesthesia. A quasi-experimental design, with a convenience sample of 100 repeat patients and a 0-10 visual analog pain scale, was used to test the hypothesis, "Will the addition of hyaluronidase to the local anesthesia mixture decrease or eliminate pain for patients undergoing vitreoretinal surgery multiple times?" The study found that the addition of hyaluronidase did significantly decrease pain for these patients.