TY - JOUR T1 - Local anaesthetic vasectomy is not as painful as patients expect JF - BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health JO - BMJ Sex Reprod Health SP - 234 LP - 235 DO - 10.1136/bmjsrh-2019-200462 VL - 46 IS - 3 AU - Aisha Sooltangos AU - Maher Al-Ausi Y1 - 2020/07/01 UR - http://jfprhc.bmj.com/content/46/3/234.abstract N2 - Vasectomy’s efficacy rate exceeds 98%.1 Yet, the number of vasectomies has been steadily declining in England, with a 63% reduction between 2005/06 and 2015/16 according to NHS Digital.2 An oft-mentioned culprit is fear of pain.3 To our knowledge, only one Canadian study proved that pain experienced during the procedure is “significantly less than pain expected” using a cohort of 172 patients.4 To dispel these misconceptions, we set out to investigate the interplay between expectations and pain perception during vasectomy. At a primary care centre in the UK, we considered No-Scalpel Vasectomy patients from March 2015 to May 2018. The mean age of patients was 39.87±6.22 (range 23–65) years. At the end of the procedure, they were asked to rate their preoperative expectation of pain (expected pain, EP), pain experienced from the anaesthetic needle (needle pain, NP) and pain experienced during the procedure (operative pain, OP). A paper questionnaire was used with … ER -