What is lidocaine?
Lidocaine (trade name e.g. Xylocain®) is a local anaesthetic. It is very fast and effective and is used very frequently. Applied to the skin or mucous membrane, lidocaine quickly and effectively relieves pain, itching and burning. Lidocaine is often given to enable painless suturing of smaller wounds and to enable surgical treatment. In addition, it can be used against cardiac arrhythmia and administered and has several other applications.
Application of Lidocaine
As an anaesthetic, lidocaine can either be injected under the skin to anaesthetize a smaller area, for example to suture a laceration or cut. Lidocaine can also be injected directly into the vicinity of a nerve, thus anaesthetising a larger area and preventing pain transmission and perception from this nerve. Therefore this type of anaesthesia is also called conduction anaesthesia.
It is used for smaller operations on the extremities, e.g. for treating a fracture of the lower leg radius. However, lidocaine is also used in spinal anaesthesia to anaesthetize the nerve root of the spinal cord. In obstetrics, it is used to reduce the pain of labor (epidural anesthesia).
Lidocaine has to act for about three minutes and then has an anaesthetic effect for up to three hours depending on the dose. Lidocaine is very often used by dentists to anaesthetize the roots of the teeth. Here too, local anaesthesia is carried out with the help of a lidocaine syringe.
In case of painful inflammations in the mouth and throat area or sore throat, Lidocaine as a spray or lozenge can provide relief. Lidocaine can also be applied locally in the oral cavity of infants to numb toothache. Lidocaine is not only available as a syringe solution, but also as sprays, ointments or drops.
The application of Lidocaine for superficial anaesthesia on the skin is in principle possible everywhere and is used, for example, as a plaster for pain relief in painful infectious diseases, such as after a herpes zoster disease. Lidocaine can also be given as a suppository to alleviate symptoms caused by hemorrhoids. The drug is also used in gout attacks, in acute attacks of ankylosing spondylitis (ankylosing spondylitis) and in inflammatory rheumatic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.
Also in the case of an acute cluster headache attack, lidocaine can be given in the form of a nasal spray into the nasal opening of the side affected by the headache. This can lead to pain relief within a few minutes. Ointments or creams containing lidocaine, so-called ‘delay creams’, can be used by men to suppress premature ejaculation.
These are available without a prescription and the effect lasts up to 60 minutes. Another application of lidocaine is in heart surgery, which can lead to cardiac arrhythmia. For example, during coronary angiography, a catheter examination of the coronary arteries, lidocaine is injected into the vein in advance to prevent the risk of cardiac arrhythmia. Lidocaine is particularly effective against rapid cardiac arrhythmias, such as ventricular fibrillation.
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