European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Background: Femur fracture causes moderate to severe pain which requires effective analgesia both preoperatively and postoperatively. Multimodal analgesic regimens which includes non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, opioids and regional analgesic techniques have been used in femur fracture patients so far. Peripheral blocks was initially done with either paresthesia technique or nerve stimulation-based technique. Ultrasound guided needle &catheter placement is observed to be technically superior, more accurate, being placed in peripheral location probably increases the safety of USG guided compared with other techniques.
Aim & Objective:

To study USG guided femoral nerve block for positioning of femur fracture patient for subarachnoid block.
To evaluate the efficacy of ultrasonography guided femoral nerve block for pain relief in femur fracture patients.
To study VAS (visual analogue scale) before and after block.
Study of hemodynamic changes before and after block.

Methods:
Study design: Prospective Observational Study.
Study setting: Anesthesia department of tertiary care centre.
Study duration: 2 years (from…. to….).
Study population: The study population included all the cases with Surgeries involving lower limbs admitted at a tertiary care center.
Sample size: 40.
Results: Our study was done on 40 patients which included 13 females and 27 male patients. There were 9 (22.5%) patients between age of 20-40 years,13 (32.5%) patients between age
 
 
 
of 40-60 years and 18(45%) patients between 60-80 years. The youngest patient in our study was 22 years and oldest patient was 80 years. ASA distribution with 21 (52.5%) ASA 1 patients and 19 (47.5%) ASA 2 patients. there were 44% patients having intertrochanteric fracture of femur, 28% patients having femur shaft fractures and 28% patients having neck of femur fracture. VAS score 26 patients had no pain and 14 patients had mild pain. the FEMORAL block had a fall in systolic and diastolic bp up to 20 mins after the block, but there was no major hemodynamic change after the block. No patients during the study had hypotension or hypertension after the femoral block. Among the study population, 98% USG guided femoral nerve block were successful with 2% failure rate as in this study we calculated success rate from percent of successful blocks to supplemental analgesia for patient positioning.
Conclusions: USG guided femoral nerve block with 0.25% bupivacaine is a better choice for pre-operative pain relief of pain in femur fracture patients with high success rate and good post-operative analgesia with no complication