Cold anesthesia for pain reduction during intralesional steroid injection for nodulocystic acne.

BACKGROUND: In any dermatologic procedure, patient acceptance of treatment is heavily influenced by intraprocedural pain. Intralesional triamcinolone injections are very important in keloid scar and nodulocystic acne treatment. However, the main problem of needle-stick procedures is pain. Cryoanesthesia is ideally intended to cool only the epidermis during treatment and has advantage which did not require application time.

AIMS: The aim of this study was to investigate the pain-reducing effect and safety of CryoVIVE® (newly introduced cryoanesthesia device) during triamcinolone injections for nodulocystic acne in actual clinical settings.

PATIENTS/METHODS: In this two-staged, non-randomized clinical trial, a total of 64 subjects underwent intralesional triamcinolone injections for their acne lesions with cold anesthesia using CryoVIVE®. The pain intensity was assessed with Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) scores. Safety profile was also evaluated.

RESULTS: The mean pain VAS scores on the lesion with and without cold anesthesia were 3.667 and 5.933, respectively (p = 0.0001). No side effects, discoloration, and scarring were observed.

CONCLUSION: In conclusion, the anesthetic use of CryoVIVE® with intralesional corticosteroid injections is a practical and well-tolerated modality.