Oral lidocaine for intractable hiccups

Interesting report 


BACKGROUND: Persistent and intractable hiccups are a rather rare, but distressing gastrointestinal symptom found in palliative care patients. Although several recommendations for treatment are given, hiccups often persist. 

 CASE REPORTS: We describe a new pharmacological approach for successfully treating hiccups in four cancer patients. In the first patient, chronic and intractable hiccups lasted for more than 18 months, but disappeared immediately after swallowing a viscous 2 % lidocaine solution for treatment of mucositis. Based on this experience, we successfully treated three further patients suffering from singultus using a lidocaine-containing gel. To our knowledge, this is the first report about managing hiccups by oral application of a lidocaine solution.


Reference:

Neuhaus T1, Ko YD, Stier S. - Successful treatment of intractable hiccups by oral application of lidocaine - Support Care Cancer. 2012 Nov;20(11):3009-11.  Epub 2012 Jul 22.