Anesthesia & Clinical Research
Open Access

Abstract

Cutaneous Anesthesia in Neuropathic Pain: Systematic Analysis

Kamen V. Vlassakov, Sanjeet Narang and Igor Kissin

This review is based on an idea that the administration of local anesthetics to the skin for the treatment of neuropathic pain can result in different types of analgesic effects depending on the presence or absence of skin anesthesia. There are many reviews on topical local anesthetics that provide pain relief without skin anesthesia, the aim of this review is to analyze studies on neuropathic pain treated with cutaneous anesthesia. The reference list of 369 articles was reduced to 8 publications that met inclusion criteria (presence of anesthetic effect was a requirement). The large magnitude of pain relief and the high consistency of the positive outcomes were commonly reported. With the single skin anesthesia treatment, both separately and collectively, the reviewed publications reported that more than half of the patients had complete pain relief, often lasting much longer (days or weeks) than the anesthesia. However, because the number of reviewed articles is small, and they represent single case reports or case series, no reliable conclusion could be drawn. The question merits investigations designed to provide high strength of evidence.