The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued updated recommendations for doctors offering birth control to their patients, including a new plea for doctors to give women more options of getting relief from the often painful insertion of intrauterine devices, or IUDs. Doctors should tell their patients that the local anesthetic lidocaine could be useful for reducing the pain of the procedure, the CDC now says. Evidence suggests lidocaine can reduce patient pain given either as injections, what doctors call a "paracervical block," or applied to the area as a gel, cream or spray.
"A person-centered plan for IUD placement and pain management should be made based on patient preference. Barriers to IUD use include patient concerns about anticipated pain with placement and provider concerns about ease of placement," the CDC recommendations say. These new recommendations come in the wake of a social media outcry over the doctors not warning patient about the difficulty of the IUD procedure or the available options to address the pain, sometimes paired with inaccurate scientific claims .
A study looking at records from the Veterans Affairs health care system found less than 12% of IUD procedures had any kind of pain medication prescribed. A recent CDC survey of physicians published in 2023 also found the majority of doctors routinely offered few pain relief options to their patients, except suggesting aspirin or ibuprofen before or during IUD placement. At least a dozen t.