The Sticking Point - or Weird Words of Science 11: Eutectic

It would be an understatement to say that my youngest son is not looking forward to his annual flu shot. Last week, the Philadelphia Inquirer had a piece on helping kids cope with the pain of immunizations. Son was not particularly impressed with the advice, but he noticed that they refered to a cream which could be applied to diminish the pain of injections. "What is it, Mom?" "EMLA, I think." "EMLA?" "A eutectic mixture of local anesthetics..." Somewhere around mixture, I think I lost him!

What is a eutectic mixture? Eutectic comes from the Greek eutektos for "easily melted"(any resemblence to tectonic is, I believe, purely accidental - tectonic also comes from the Greek, but for building, not melting!). An eutectic mixture is one in which the melting point of the mix is lower than the melting point of either of the components. The binary phase diagram has a "eutectic point". EMLA is a mixture of equal weights of lidocaine and prilocaine, made into an emulsion.

It's apparently quite effective, but requires a lead time of several hours (and the foresight to ask the pediatrician for a prescription!).