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Background and Aims Some physicians recommend cold therapy or local anesthetic spray to reduce pain caused by drain removal and other surgical procedures. We aimed to test the effectiveness of lidocaine spray and ice application to reduce pain associated with drain removal.

Methods For this prospective randomized controlled trial, patients were divided into three groups by computer-generated block of six randomization. In the control group, drains were removed by the standard process. In the lidocaine group, 6 puffs of 10% lidocaine spray were applied from 5 centimeters away to the skin around the drain 5 minutes prior to removal. In the ice group, an ice pack was applied to cover the skin around the drain for 5 minutes before drain removal. Pain intensity was recorded via visual analog scale at the time of removing the drain and 10 minutes after drain removal. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to determine the statistical significance.

Results A total of 156 patients were divided equally into three separate groups. Visual analog scales revealed that immediately after drain removal pain intensity was significantly lower in the ice group compared to the control group and the lidocaine group (2.17 ± 0.87 vs 3.76 ± 0.92 vs 3.5± 0.89, P-value < 0.001). Ten minutes after drain removal there was also statistically significant difference in pain intensity between the three groups (0.11 ± 0.32 vs 0.40 ± 0.53 vs 0.53 ± 0.54, P-value < 0.001).

Conclusions Ice application prior to intraabdominal drain removal is an effective non-pharmacologic intervention to reduce the associated pain.