Cutaneous Administration of Local Anesthetic for Spine Injection Procedures

Interventional spine procedures are an increasingly popular means of diagnosis and treatment of spine disease. By convention, local anesthetics are used at the beginning of these procedures with the goal of minimizing pain. However, the infiltration of the local anesthetic is painful. This initial painful stimulus can heighten pain awareness and cause anxiety or excessive movement during the procedure. The purpose of this study is to determine patient discomfort with administration of cutaneous local anesthetic prior to interventional spine procedures compared to no anesthetic administration for different gauge procedural needles. Another purpose is to determine patient discomfort with administration of local anesthetic by traditional technique compared to an alternative technique and to develop a standardized technique and criteria for local anesthetic administration during spine injection procedures that minimizes patient pain, and may help reduce the overall risk of these procedures. We plan to enroll a total of 200-300 subjects coming to Stanford for symmetric bilateral single injections.