Effect of cervical lidocaine-prilocaine cream on pain perception during copper T380A intrauterine device insertion among parous women: A randomized double-blind controlled trial.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Copper (Supplement), published as a randomized controlled trial.

The objective was to investigate the analgesic effect of cervical lidocaine-prilocaine (LP) cream in alleviating pain during copper T380A intrauterine device (IUD) insertion among parous women.

Who Took Part

The study group was 2016 women.

PubMed indexes the participants as adults, women only.

The researchers conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial at Assiut Women's Health Hospital, Egypt, from October 2015 to April 2016 of parous women desiring copper IUD insertion.

The researchers randomized the subjects in a 1:1 ratio to LP cream or placebo.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Copper (Supplement) and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

As a double-blind Copper (Supplement) study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Copper (Supplement) could be set against what happens without it.

The study end point was the subjects' self-reported pain using a 10-cm visual analog scale (VAS) during cervical tenaculum placement, sound insertion, IUD insertion and 5 min postprocedure.

Also, the difference in the ease of insertion score using a 10-cm VAS with 0=very easy insertion and 10=terribly difficult insertion was assessed.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Administration, Intravaginal, Anesthetics, Combined, Anesthetics, Local, Egypt, Intrauterine Devices, Copper, Lidocaine and Linear Models.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Contraception, Lidocaine–prilocaine, Local anesthetic and Pain relief.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Copper (Supplement) in 2016 women.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Its findings take up roughly 7 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2017 (Contraception), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Copper (Supplement) compound page, all human trials.