Coughing can reduce pain of injection, study shows

So, how can patients be distracted from the pain of an injection? Many tactics have been tried,including cartoons, hypnosis, music, jokes, and counter-pressure, but doctors now report high success rates with a simple cost-free, and risk-free strategy, that requires no specialist equipment—coughing.

As the needle comes into contact with the skin, the patient is urged to cough vigorously. That cough, say the doctors, in an article published online ahead of print in the British Journal ofPlastic Surgery (www.bjps.com), may provide distraction and momentarily increase blood pressure. The authors say that it has been established …