Viscous tetracaine hydrochloride 0.5% for topical anesthesia in cataract surgery

Abstract

For the past decade, lidocaine 2% gel has been one of the more commonly used agents for topical anesthesia in cataract surgery, particularly in the USA. Given its prolonged contact time with the ocular surface by nature of its viscosity, it has been found to provide superior anesthesia relative to anesthetic drops. A downside to this inexpensive and efficacious agent is that it was never intended to be used for ophthalmic surgery and, as a result, is packaged in a tube rendering it somewhat messy to apply. TetraVisc™ is a high-viscosity formulation of tetracaine hydrochloride 0.5% that is packaged in a sterile ophthalmic dropper bottle. A single report in the literature suggests that it is of equal efficacy to lidocaine 2% gel as a topical anesthetic for routine cataract surgery.

Keywords::

• cataract surgery
• eye surgery
• lidocaine gel
• tetracaine hydrochloride
• TetraVisc™
• topical anesthesia

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The author has no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.