news
Labor pain relief
UQ research shows Labor pain could be treated by water injections .
By Conor Burke
Women in Labor could soon have another alternative for pain relief — water .
Researchers at the University of Queensland are conducting research into whether labor pain could be reduced by water injections thanks to a new round of federal funding .
As unusual as it sounds , water injections have been used for pain for relief for a couple hundred years .
Dr Nigel Lee , from UQ ’ s School of Nursing , Midwifery and Social Work , says that it started in the late 1800s prior to the discovery of cocaine , which was one of the first anaesthetics .
“ What they found was that if they injected a series of small amounts of water along two parallel lines , the flesh in between would become anaesthetised . That ’ s how they would do that prior to surgery ,” he says .
The practice fell out of favour for many years , before making a comeback in the 1970s and 80s and was used for a few different types of pain relief , notably back pain .
Recently , Lee and his colleagues conducted a study of over a thousand women and found that injecting water in the lumbar region of women
6 | nursingreview . com . au who experience back pain during labor took away that pain for over two hours .
And now the team aims to see if the same can be applied to contractional pains .
The trial consists of giving women six to eight water injections which only go not much more than a millimetre deep into the skin itself .
“ And there has been this theory of pain interpretation , which has been around since the 1960s called Gate Control Theory ,” says Lee .
“ If you have pain and someone gives you a stronger pain or a pain somewhere else , the brain can only really concentrate on one at a time , so it tends to focus on the one that ’ s most intense .”
The injections of water provide a very intense , but very brief pain when they ’ re injected because the water is drawn immediately into the cells , as there is no salt in the water , unlike saline , and that reacts with the cells to create a very sharp pain .
The pain also triggers the release of endorphins , which are natural morphine or narcotic-like substances the body produces in response to pain .
“ So essentially what we ’ re doing is triggering the body ’ s own pain modulating systems to provide its own pain relief in a very localised way ,” Lee says .
If successful , this type of treatment could be beneficial to hospitals and pregnant
“ What we ’ re doing is triggering the body ’ s own pain modulating systems to provide its own pain relief .
women . It would be extremely low cost , and injecting water excludes any chance of an allergic reaction , unlike other types of pain relief .
“ The pharmacological options for pain relief in labour haven ’ t really changed in 50 years .
“ We know from our previous research that that ’ s basically what a lot of women are actually looking for . They want something that ’ s going to help them cope with the pain , not necessarily take all of it away .
“ They also want to be able to move around and actually experience the birth itself , of which things like epidurals and injections of narcotics , and even the nitrous oxide gas , detracts away from that ,” says Lee .
Lee says that water injection would be a safe alternative in areas of the country , such as regional and remote areas , where women do not have easy access to more common types of pain relief .
Lee and his team will test the water injections over a two-year period from early 2022 at the Royal Brisbane and Women ’ s Hospital . ■