Did my doctor do this right?

October 20, 2016 2:03 PM

Just had a mole removed from the back of my neck. The doctor gave me a shot of lidocaine (I think) and then sprayed the area with a numbing spray. Shouldn't it have been the other way around?

Getting the shot was a little painful but not unbearable but now I'm a little confused about why she sprayed it with what she called a numbing spray afterward. This was the first time I'd seen this particular doctor and I was more than a little distracted as it was happening so i didn't think to ask her about it at the time. I'm not complaining about the procedure; I'm just curious.

posted by otherwordlyglow to Health & Fitness (9 answers total)

That might depend on whether the numbing spray was sterile or not.
posted by pipeski at 2:13 PM on October 20, 2016

I just went to the dentist. Had topical numbing gel then a shot in my gums. Not sure why this would be different.
posted by jbenben at 2:14 PM on October 20, 2016

Response by poster: Don't know what the numbing spray was or if it was sterile but she did swab down the area with some sort of solution (alcohol?) prior to the shot as well.
posted by otherwordlyglow at 2:15 PM on October 20, 2016

Two anesthetics beats one. The shot reaches the interior, the spray numbs the skin surface. IANAD.
posted by JimN2TAW at 2:21 PM on October 20, 2016

The shot takes a bit of time to kick in. The topical is probably faster acting. There are only so many minutes allotted to each appointment; even cutting the wait time by a few seconds matters over the course of a busy day.

The topical spray is not for the pain of the shot, it's for the actual procedure.
posted by phunniemee at 2:25 PM on October 20, 2016 [14 favorites]

I've had doctors try to explain weird order with sprays and I never fully understood but my takeaway is that the spray is not to prevent you from feeling the shot, it's for 10 minutes later when the shot is working slightly deeper in the skin but it stings like hell or flat-out hurts on the surface.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:26 PM on October 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

Numbing spray is sterile, btw. (I use it all the time.)
posted by mochapickle at 5:26 PM on October 20, 2016

It does seem a little odd. The ideal strategy for a local incision and / or injection is to find a way to minimize the actual pain of the needle penetrating the skin and the pain associated with the swelling and pH changes within the tissue as the lidocaine is taking effect and injected. So a local spray would make sense before the actual injection and not much after. OTOH, doctors often develop quirks in how they do things based on experience. It's possible that the local spray was also acting to further stem local capillary bleeding after the biopsy. Hard to say.
posted by docpops at 7:17 PM on October 20, 2016

From watching Plastic Surgeons of Orange County (or something like it -- it's a reality show I devoured on Netflix), I think I remember them saying that lidocaine reduces bleeding. Less bleeding = quicker recovery.

(A cursory internet search says my aural memory is plausibly correct, but again, this is data-from-reality-tv)
posted by batter_my_heart at 11:03 PM on October 20, 2016