What to know about pain relief for IUD insertion, after CDC updates recommendations

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued updated recommendations for doctors offering birth control to their patients, including a new plea for doctors to give women more options of getting relief from the often painful insertion of intrauterine devices, or IUDs.

Doctors should tell their patients that the local anesthetic lidocaine could be useful for reducing the pain of the procedure, the CDC now says. 

Evidence suggests lidocaine can reduce patient pain given either as injections, what doctors call a "paracervical block," or applied to the area as a gel, cream or spray.