Improving Pain Control in Elderly Hip Fractures with Fascia Iliaca Compartment Block

Successful pain control in elderly hip fracture is associated with decreased morbidity, anxiety, delirium, and length of stay, but standard treatment with intravenous opioids also comes with its own harmful side effects. Peripheral nerve blocks, such as fascia iliaca compartment blocks have been shown in other countries to successfully reduce pain levels but are not common in the preoperative period. This project was undertaken to evaluate the efficacy of fascia iliaca compartment blocks in elderly hip fractures. This was a single institution retrospective analysis of a quality improvement project for blocks in ten sequential elderly hip fractures that were analyzed using a two-tailed paired t-test. Post block VAS scores significantly improved when compared to their pre-block counterparts with a median morphine equivalent requirement of 13.5 prior to operative intervention. Therefore, this project for elderly hip fractures shows successful improvement in pain control pre-operatively and demonstrates promising results for a future prospective, randomized control study.