Topical anesthetic for abscesses

Placing topical anesthetic (EMLA, LMX4) on skin abscesses may result in spontaneous drainage, precluding need for incision. If topical anesthetic doesn’t result in spontaneous drainage, it at least provides some skin anesthesia prior to local anesthetic injection for incision and drainage procedure. In one published retrospective study, 26 of 110 patients with the topical anesthetic LMX4 placed had spontaneous drainage, 3 of whom required no further intervention: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21129885