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Topical lidocaine patch 5% for acute postoperative pain control

D Gilhooly1, B McGarvey, H O'Mahony

  • 1Anaesthesia and Pain Management, Sligo General Hospital, Sligo, Ireland. d.gilhooly@excite.com

BMJ Case Reports
|June 21, 2012
PubMed

A 39-year-old para 3 woman presented for elective caesarean section (lower segment caesarean section (LSCS)) for breech presentation. The patient had a strong history of atopy and anaphylaxis to paracetamol, codeine, penicillin and latex. The patient was asthmatic, triggered by aspirin. Epidural anaesthesia was unsuccessful and LSCS was carried out under spinal anaesthesia. Postoperatively the patient was unwilling to take analgesic medication due to fear of an allergic reaction. Three 5% lidocaine patches were applied to the wound for postoperative analgesia. This reduced the patient's visual analogue scale pain score from 10/10 to 5/10 at rest and 10/10 to 7/10 with movement. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation was added and this improved associated back pain, reducing the pain further to 2/10. This is the first description of lignocaine patch 5% for postoperative LSCS pain. It is suggested that this method of delivery of local anaesthetic, which is easy to apply and has minimal side effects, should be considered not as a sole agent but as part of a multimodal technique to address postoperative LSCS pain.

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