The Pretreatment of Thiopental Sodium for Reducing Injection Pain of Propopofol

Shin, Ok Young; Lee, Dong Kun; Kim, Keon Sik; Kang, Wha Ja; Lee, Doo Ik; Kim, Dong Soo

Abstract

BACKGROUND
The incidence of pain on injection of propofol varies between 30 and 100%. A variety of pretreatments have been tried to alleviate this problem such as a local anesthetics, cooling and opioids. However, none of these pharmacological maneuvers were satisfactory yet. In a recent study, subhypnotic doses of both thiopental sodium and propofol decrease the acute pain. We report a comparison of thiopental sodium, lidocaine and placebo on the incidence and severity of pain on injection of propofol. METHOD: A controlied, double-blind study was performed to compare the prior administration of intravenous saline 2 ml (n 30, group S), lidocaine 20 mg (n-30, group L) and thiopental sodium 50 mg (n 30, group T) in alleviating the pain by propofol. Injection pain was assessed with the four-point verbal categorical scoring system. RESULT: The incidence of injection pain during induction was lower in group L (30%) and T (17%) than group S (77%). The incidence of injection pain was lower in group T (17%) than group L (30%), but not significant statistically. The pain scores for recall of pain in the recovery room was simlar to those pain during propofol induction.
CONCLUSION
The pretreatment of thiopental sodium can be effective in reducing both incidence and severity of propofol injection pain and has similar effect to lidocaine to prevent propofol injection pain.