Combined periprostatic and intraprostatic local anesthesia for prostate biopsy: A double-blind, placebo controlled, randomized trial

Purpose: Transrectal ultrasonography guided prostate biopsy is the principle procedure in the histological diagnosis of prostate cancer. Recently a trend toward increasing the number of cores has been popularized. This practice further increases the need for a proper anesthetic application. However, there is no consensus on a standard local anesthetic strategy, while groups at most institutions currently prefer periprostatic anesthesia. We prospectively evaluated the contribution of intraprostatic anesthesia for transrectal prostate biopsies even when the sampling number was doubled to 12 cores. Materials and Methods: A total of 200 patients who underwent prostate biopsy with transrectal ultrasound guidance were included. The 2 groups received the usual periprostatic anesthesia. Consequently patients were prospectively randomized into 2 groups. Group 1 received additional intraprostatic lidocaine injection, while group 2 received the same amount of injection of 0.9% NaCl. The efficiency of applied local anesthesia was assessed by a visual analog pain scale. Results: The study groups were comparable regarding patient age, prostate size and cancer rate. Pain scores revealed that the combination of intraprostatic and periprostatic local anesthesia provided significantly better pain control than periprostatic infiltration alone. No difference was observed regarding the morbidity rate in the 2 groups. Conclusions: The current study suggested that adding intraprostatic local anesthesia provides a significantly efficient strategy during transrectal ultrasound prostate biopsy, even in cases of 12-core sampling. Subsequent trials are needed to establish a standard analgesia policy for prostate biopsy.