A comparison of two different methods of topical Anaesthesia for intravenous cannula insertion - CoolSense® (a product that cools and numbs the skin) versus EMLA® (a cream that numbs the skin).

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Almost all patients presenting for anaesthesia will require an intravenous cannula prior to surgery. However, many patients find this an unpleasant experience and this leads to a great deal of anxiety and in some cases needlephobia. With the CDHB, the Coolsense® device has recently been introduced to cool and anaesthetise the skin prior to cannulation. However, there are no studies published in peer review journals comparing Coolsense® to topical anaesthetic cream, eg EMLA®. We hypothesis that Coolsense® will provide an equivalent level of satisfaction to EMLA®. We will ask healthy volunteers (adults over 18 years) to agree for two 20G intravenous cannulas to be inserted into each hand. Prior to insertion, one hand will be anaesthetised with the application of EMLA®, a topical local anaesthetic cream which will be applied a minimum of 45 minutes prior to cannulation and the other hand using Coolsense® according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Groups will be randomised to determine which hand is anaesthetised with Coolsense®, which hand anaesthetised with EMLA® and which hand will be first to cannulated. The volunteers will be asked to record pain on a numerical pain rating scale of zero to ten and rate their satisfaction (scale zero to to 10) for each method of topical anaesthesia. They will then be asked to state which technique was preferred (options: EMLA, Coolsense, both similar).

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