Objective: To determine the methods of anesthesia currently being used by pediatric rheumatologists when performing intra-articular corticosteroid injections (IACI).
Study design: A questionnaire was emailed to all members of the Childhood Arthritis & Rheumatology Research Alliance, a pediatric rheumatology research network in North America. The questionnaire consisted of 11 questions ranging from procedure technique, treatments prescribed for topical anesthesia and oral analgesia, and factors that might affect procedural pain.
Results: Seventy-four of 161 physicians (46%) responded to the questionnaire. On average, each physician injected 33 children (median 25, range 1-160) and 43 joints (median 30, range 1-150) yearly. Local anesthesia was used in children on average >/= 8 years (range 2-16 years), with general anesthesia being more frequently used for younger children. All respondents used local anesthesia. The most commonly used methods of local anesthesia were EMLA((R) )cream plus subcutaneous lidocaine (58.8%), ethyl chloride spray only (39.7%), EMLA((R) )cream only (33.8%), subcutaneous lidocaine only (25%), and lidocaine iontophoresis only (11.8%). Buffering of the lidocaine was routinely done only 7.4% of the time.
Conclusion: Although pediatric rheumatologists in North America perform IACI on a large number of patients each year, a wide variety of methods are used to deliver local anesthesia with no accepted standard of care. More studies are needed to determine the optimal method of local anesthesia delivery to minimize pain associated with IACI.