This Research is a Rip-Off!!

Your mother probably told you when you were a kid that taking a band-aid off quickly would actually be LESS painful than removing it slowly. While we accepted her at her word, now comes scientific information to verity that "Dr. Mom" does, indeed, know what she's talking about.

It seems that some researcher in Australia who didn't have much else to do, did a clinical study to determine which method is less painful. Here is the report:

"A randomised trial has found that fast band-aid removal is less painful to healthy young adults than slow band-aid removal, according to a report published in the Medical Journal of Australia.Operators applied medium-sized band-aids to 65 Second and Third Year medical students at James Cook University and removed the band-aids using slow and fast techniques. The students were asked to rate their pain using an 11-point scoring system, with 0 representing "no pain" and 10 representing "worst pain imaginable". "The average overall pain score for fast band-aid removal was 0.92 and for slow band-aid removal was 1.58. The average overall pain scores for women were significantly lower than for men (0.91 compared to 1.64). This may be due to higher pain tolerance, although men did tend to have more body hair," study co-author Dr Carl O'Kane said. "A high body hair score was, not surprisingly, associated with higher pain scores, and it seemed that preconceptions about pain also had an appreciable effect. "The pain experience is a complex and incompletely understood process that incorporates many aspects of patients' social and cultural beliefs, as well as previous experiences. Our observation that preconceptions were associated with pain scores should therefore not be surprising." Students with wounds, documented or suspected allergies to adhesive dressings, chronic pain, or anxiety disorders were excluded from the study. "These results would not be applicable to patients with wounds, particularly chronic wounds and ulcers, which may adhere to band-aids, or other simple dressings. Our sample consisted of healthy young adults and our results may not be applicable to other age groups such as children and older people," Dr O'Kane said. Dr O'Kane said students who were tested by one of the two operators reported higher pain levels than those tested by the other operator. "This may indicate that there are skilled band-aid removers and less-skilled or unskilled band-aid removers," he said.

The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association. SourceAustralian Medical Association