Systemic administration of local anesthetic agents to relieve neuropathic pain

• Published in: Cochrane database of systematic reviews 2005-10, Vol.2019 (4), p.CD003345
• Main Authors: Challapalli, V, Tremont-Lukats, I W, McNicol, E D, Lau, J, Carr, D B
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Administration, Oral; Anesthetics, Intravenous - administration & dosage; Anesthetics, Local - administration & dosage; Flecainide - administration & dosage; Humans; Lidocaine - administration & dosage; Lidocaine - analogs & derivatives; Mexiletine - administration & dosage; Nervous System Diseases - complications; Pain & anaesthesia; Pain - drug therapy; Pain - etiology; Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; Tocainide - administration & dosage
• ISSN: 1469-493X; 1469-493X
• DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD003345.pub2

Lidocaine, mexiletine, tocainide, and flecainide are local anesthetics which give an analgesic effect when administered orally or parenterally. Early reports described the use of intravenous lidocaine or procaine to relieve cancer and postoperative pain (Keats 1951; Gilbert 1951; De Clive-Lowe 1958; Bartlett 1961). Interest reappeared decades later when patient series and clinical trials reported that parenteral lidocaine and its oral analogs tocainide, mexiletine, and flecainide relieved neuropathic pain in some patients (Boas 1982; Lindblom 1984; Petersen 1986; Dunlop 1988; Bach 1990; Awerbuch 1990). With the recent publication of clinical trials with high quality standards, we have reviewed the use of systemic lidocaine and its oral analogs in neuropathic pain to update our knowledge, to measure their benefit and harm, and to better define their role in therapy. To evaluate pain relief and adverse effect rates between systemic local anesthetic-type drugs and other control interventions. We searched MEDLINE (1966 through 15 May 2004), EMBASE (January 1980 to December 2002), Cancer Lit (through 15 December 2002), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (2nd Quarter, 2004), System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe (SIGLE), and LILACS, from January 1966 through March 2001. We also hand searched conference proceedings, textbooks, original articles and reviews. We included trials with random allocation, that were double blinded, with a parallel or crossover design. The control intervention was a placebo or an analgesic drug for neuropathic pain from any cause. We collected efficacy and safety data from all published and unpublished trials. We calculated combined effect sizes using continuous and binary data for pain relief and adverse effects as primary and secondary outcome measurements, respectively. Thirty-two controlled clinical trials met the selection criteria; two were duplicate articles. The treatment drugs were intravenous lidocaine (16 trials), mexiletine (12 trials), lidocaine plus mexiletine sequentially (one trial), and tocainide (one trial). Twenty-one trials were crossover studies, and nine were parallel. Lidocaine and mexiletine were superior to placebo [weighted mean difference (WMD) = -11; 95% CI: -15 to -7; P