Evaluation of the efficacy of nebulised lignocaine as adjunctive local anaesthesia for fibreoptic bronchoscopy: a randomised, placebo-controlled study.

Optimisation of topical anaesthesia for flexible fibreoptic bronchoscopy (FOB) is becoming increasingly important as a wider range of more complex, and thereby more prolonged, interventional endoscopic procedures are becoming available. Lignocaine is the most commonly used topical anaesthetic agent for bronchoscopy, but there is variability in current practice as to its optimum mode of administration. In this prospective, randomised, placebo-controlled, blinded study, we examine whether there was enhanced effectiveness of additional nebulised lignocaine as compared to our current regime utilising two visual analogue scales as markers of efficacy. Treatment groups were matched in terms of age (p = 0.39), gender, concomitant sedation (p = 0.51 midazolam; p = 0.12 fentanyl) and dose of background administered lignocaine (290 mg). We found no significant additional differences between any of the treatment groups in terms of general ease of procedure (p = 0.09) or in cough severity (p = 0.12). We conclude that this study does not support the hypothesis that additional nebulised lignocaine confers any additional benefit to the ease of procedure or cough severity in patients undergoing fibreoptic bronchoscopy. We suggest that preparation regimes for bronchoscopic examinations need optimization.