The FINOF (Femoral Nerve-Block Intervention in Neck Of Femur Fracture) Study

Project Duration

November 2010 - November 2011

Funder

NIHR RfPB

Aims

The hypothesis to be tested is that femoral nerve blockade administered in the acute and early post operative phase to elderly hip fracture patients will control pain, improve early rehabilitation and reduce opioid associated complications. The aims of this study are to: 

1. Evaluate the effects of femoral nerve blockade compared to systemic opioids upon pain in the acute and post operative phase and post operative rehabilitation
2. Estimate the cost-effectiveness of femoral nerve blockade, compared to usual care from a NHS perspective
3. Examine issues of compliance, acceptability to staff and patients and systems implementation (content and process fidelity) to enable replication of the findings of this study to other hospital settings

Methods

A 12 month, randomised controlled trial.

Elderly patients presenting to the hospital with a suspected low trauma hip fracture will be randomised to the study analgesia protocol or standard analgesia care. The study analgesia protocol will include, a femoral nerve block, followed by insertion of a peri-neural femoral nerve catheter and femoral nerve blockade maintained by infusion for 72 hours post-operatively.

Primary outcome will be a three day post operative cumulative dynamic pain score and cumulative rehabilitation score. A detailed integral qualitative study will be undertaken (subset of subjects) to examine content and process fidelity.

Outcomes and Findings

This project is now complete.