Conditions: Anesthesia Pain
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 126
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
Ethyl chloride vapocoolant sprays provide transient skin anesthesia within seconds of application. The current investigation aim is to compare the effect of ethyl chloride based vapocoolant spray to placebo in reducing pain associated with arterial puncture for gasometry determinations.

The investigators will conduce a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial at Emergency Department.

We will enroll patients who come to Emergency Department who need an arterial gasometry determination. Patients will be randomized to intervention-group (ethyl chloride vapocoolant sprays will be usad before arterial puncture) or to placebo-group (alcohol spray as placebo will be used before arterial puncture.) and after the puncture they will rate their pain using a 10 points visual analogue scale.

Detailed description:
Single-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial in an emergency department of Hospital de Basurto in Bilbao, Spain. Patients for whom arterial blood gas analysis had been ordered will be included. They will be randomly assigned to receive application of the experimental ethyl chloride spray or a placebo aerosol spray of a solution of alcohol in water. The assigned spray will be applied just before arterial puncture. The main outcome variable is pain intensity reported on an 11-point numeric rating scale.

Arms:
arm 1: Alcohol -based spray as placebo will be administrated before arterial puncture. arm 2: Ethyl choride will be administrated before arterial puncture.

Interventions: intervention 1: Ethyl chloride intervention 2: Alcohol
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Nurses will administrate ethyl chloride vapocoolant spray on patient's skin a few seconds before arterial puncture (of cubital arteria). intervention 2: Nurses will use an alcohol-based spray as placebo on patient's skin a few seconds before arterial puncture (of cubital arteria).

Protocol document: