What is Buzzy

Buzzy® uses natural pain relief by confusing your body's own nerves and distracting attention away from the poke, thereby dulling or eliminating sharp pain. In the same way that rubbing a bumped elbow helps stop the hurt, or cool running water soothes a burn, Buzzy® bypasses sharp pain.

In an emergency department, nurses and doctors can get too busy to wait for numbing creams for needle procedures. For newly diagnosed diabetic children, the medical community has a history of expecting kids to just get used to needle pain. For shots, for bee stings, for boo-boos, for injected medicines, for all acute pain management, we developed Buzzy® to put instant pain management in YOUR hands.

A pilot trial in adults for IV starts (Clinical Journal of Pain, October 2009) found that Buzzy® significantly decreased needle pain. A trial in children needing IV starts in the emergency department also showed significantly decreased pain by child and parent report. Buzzy® has been used for dentistry, travel immunizations, fertility shots, and finger pricks, splinter removal, and flu injections!

Buzzy for Dermatology

While most dermatology procedural pain is brief, it may result in lingering stinging or may be required multiple times. For patients with needlephobia, this can ramp up anxiety on subsequent visits. Whether you always use topical anesthetics or routinely talk patients through it, Buzzy can help!

For injecting or freezing a wart, place Buzzy on the MP joint where a digital block would go. Activate the vibration and put a frozen pack under Buzzy's elastic strap. For maximum pain relief on older patients you may want to wait up to 1 minute, but for a younger child 15 seconds may be sufficient due to their thinner stratum corneum and greater sensitivity to cold.

For a biopsy, curettage pain or cryofreezing on the dorsum of the hand, place Buzzy proximal. This image shows an IV stick, but the principle is the same: 1) Place Buzzy directly on the site for 15 seconds 2) Slide Buzzy proximal and hold in place with the "hands free" velcro strap while injecting. Buzzy's numbing radius averages 11 cm with cold and vibration together, but the closer Buzzy's bottom end is to the pain, the better.

It is important to stay in the same dermatome, "between the brain and the pain."

The use of vibration for Botox pain was recently described at the AAD 2011 conference. Dentists have used the wiggle trick for years with oral injections, but injections anywhere can respond the same way. The advantage to Buzzy over round vibration sources is Buzzy's concave curve to maximize delivery of vibration. The easy ability to add a thin ice pack for increased pain relief is a plus. Patients can control Buzzy for nasolabial fold injections, or you can slide Buzzy along proximally as you progress.

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For more information on Buzzy at Crutchfield Dermatology call (651) 209-3600