Upper arm tourniquet pain in local anaesthetic surgery

A prospective study was performed on 100 consecutive patients (110 procedures) of the perception of pain from an arm tourniquet during a local anaesthetic procedure. This was assessed subjectively, and objectively using a visual analogue scale. For tourniquet times up to 20 minutes, the tourniquet was well tolerated with only one failure (1% of patients) and all successful patients stated that they would be happy to have a similar procedure again. Unlike previous studies, there appeared to be no correlation between time of tourniquet use and the pain perceived. Rather, there appeared to be an idiosyncratic response to the tourniquet which was borne out by the ten patients who had bilateral procedures at least 6 weeks apart and showed consistently repeatable scores.