Supernumerary digits and pre-auricular skin tags are common congenital anomalies. Traditional methods for managing these minor conditions have been to perform surgical procedures under general anaesthesia once the child is over 12 months of age.
Often these cases are identified at birth by the neonatal team or parents. Sucrose is an established method of analgesia in neonates and is currently used in the inpatient and outpatient setting as analgesia for minor procedures such as blood tests, nasogastric tube insertion or tongue ties.
We have implemented a consultant led service at Christchurch Hospital to perform minor procedures on supernumerary digits and pre-auricular skin tags with local anaesthetic and sucrose analgesia in infants under 6 weeks of age.
We discuss our technique and parent experience. We believe this service has benefits over the traditional method by avoiding general anaesthesia in a young child, addressing the problem in a timely manner and reducing the requirement of operating theatres in a resource limited environment.