Ice cubes can ease pain of jabs in A&E

Ice cubes are an effective way to reduce the pain from local anaesthetic injections given to patients in A&e before their wounds are stitched, reports the emergency Medicine Journal.

Injections of lidocaine, a widely used local anaesthetic, can often be painful. In a trial of 50 patients aged 18 to 65 at Ajou University Hospital in South Korea, some patients had an ice cube inside a sterile vinyl glove held against their skin for two minutes before the jab.

They reported much less pain than those who had the injection without the ice cube.