Background
pain
LOCAL ANESTHETICS
Patients in the pediatricsetting often experience invasive procedures like blood collection, immunization and intravenous (IV) catheterization, which bring about pain, stress and fear during their treatment [Generally, pain management can be categorized into pharmacological and nonpharmacological interventions. Local anesthetics is one of the main pharmacological interventions in needle-related pain management, which can penetrate the cuticle and epidermal layer of intact skin, enter the dermis where nerve endings are located and relieve pain [However, it has been reported that the pain scores can reach up to 5 points (moderate pain) when local anesthesia is applied [There are limited data studies on merging pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions to compensate for each other’s inadequacies. Hence, this study aimed to evaluate the effect of combining topical anesthetic and distraction techniques in comparison with the intervention applied singly. As a result, we expect a better effect from integrating pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions.