Analysis Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Analysis - Research Paper Example But the use of buffered lidocaine faces some issues as it is a compounded medication and needs to be procured from the pharmacy and with its short half-life the FDA requires this solution to be replaced weekly which has been adopted even for this present study. In the case of bacteriostatic normal saline, the presence of benzyl alcohol as a preservative and an anesthetic has been proposed as a suitable alternative for intradermal lidocaine. Other local anesthetics such as the topical lidocaine-prilocaine suffer from certain disadvantages as it is inappropriate for use on the day of the surgery, is not economical and needs to be applied 30 minutes prior to starting the IV for best results. The practice of using intradermal bacteriostatic saline instead of intradermal buffered lidocaine as the former was cost effective was adopted by a Midwestern community hospital as a pain management strategy during surgeries. However, the concern of the nurses in the hospital has been the lesser num ber of comparative studies that have determined efficacy of the two anesthetics. Additionally they have provided inconclusive evidence about the use of either intradermal lidocaine or bacteriostatic saline as an effective anesthetic prior to IV injection. Hence the present study aimed to determine the efficacy of the two anesthetics in order to bring about a practice change. ... However, previous studies have been inconclusive in comparing the effectiveness of the two anesthetics: intradermal lidocaine and bacteriostatic saline. Hence the present study was designed to compare the efficacy and determine the degree of pain using the two anesthetics and a randomized double-blind; quasi-experiment, and two-treatment, parallel designed study was conducted. The study was started after approval by the institutional review board. Both male and female same-day surgery patients in the age group of 18 to 80 were invited to take part in the study. The inclusion criteria were the presence of a physician’s order for a peripheral IV line and an ability to express the level of pain experienced. The sample size of the study included 150 adults who were admitted for same-day surgery between the months February and May. Two subjects required more than one venipuncture and in view of inaccurate reporting of the pain they were excluded from the study and others who were e xcluded include subjects allergic to lidocaine and others who had to take pain medication in the previous four hours. The degree of pain experienced by the subjects was measured using a modified verbal numeric rating scale (VNRS) in which the pain was recorded on a scale of 0 to 10. Buffered lidocaine for the study was prepared by a pharmacist using lidocaine and sodium bicarbonate and commercially available bacteriostatic saline was used. All the study subjects were blinded to the study solution and the basic demographics such as age, sex, race, IV location and catheter size were collected. The study protocol was explained to both the study participants and nurses who were responsible for the catheterization and informed consent was obtained from the participants.