Femoral nerve block by nerve stimulator with or without ultrasonography guide for post operative pain management of isolated femoral shaft fracture

Aims and New standards have been developed for pain management in the recent years, and many focused on perioperative pain management to reduce complications during and after the surgery. This study has been designed to determine the impact of ultrasonography on the onset and duration of the analgesia by femoral nerve block after isolated femoral fracture surgery. In this randomized clinical trial 48 patients with femoral fracture candidate for plate fixation surgery were randomly enrolled into two groups of 24(nerve stimulator and ultrasonography combined with nerve stimulator). The results were analyzed with SPSS 16 software. P value <0/05 was considered significant.Finings: The mean onset time of analgesia for nerve stimulator group was 6.375 minutes and for Nerve stimulator with ultrasonography it was 4.333 minutes. Considering the P _ value which was <0.001 for the onset of analgesia, commence of analgesia in ultrasonography group was significantly earlier. The mean duration of analgesia in nerve stimulator group was 299.16 minutes and for ultrasonography with nerve stimulator it was 377.5 minutes (p<0.001) so long-term analgesia was improved with adding ultrasonography to nerve stimulator. Ultrasonography improved femoral nerve block efficacy in different aspects such as successful block, time of onset and duration of analgesia.