Comparison of 0.2% Bupivacaine with 0.2% Ropivacaine in Femoral Nerve Block for Preoperative Positioning and Postoperative Analgesia in Femur Fractures

Abstract

Introduction: Femur fractures are very painful. The peripheral nerve block provides good analgesia in these patients before performing regional anesthesia. This study aims to compare 2 local anesthestics in femoral nerve block for analgesia in preoperative positioning and postoperative analgesia of patients Methods: Prospective, randomized study was conducted on 60 patients (18-60 years) of ASA Iand II scheduled for femur surgery under combined spinal epidural. anaesthesia In group B (n=30), femoral nerve block(FNB) was performed with 0.2% bupivacaine (30ml) and in group R(n=30), 0.2% ropivacaine (30 ml) was used. Various parameters like numeric rating pain scale, time to spinal anaesthesia, sensory and motor block onset times and durations, time to first analgesic use, intraoperative and postoperative visual analog scale (VAS) data, post- operative epidural top ups, vitals and side effects were recorded for each patient. Results: Pain assessed on visual analogue scale (VAS) during positioning was significantly less in FNB group using 0.2%bupivacaine at 5 minutes. Time to perform spinal block was significantly shorter in FNB group using 0.2% bupivacaine (8.30 min) versus ropivacaine group (17.30 min). But postoperative analgesic requirements were more in ropivacaine group and duration of analgesia was prolonged in bupivacaine group. Conclusion: With bupivacaine time to perform spinal anesthesia was reduced and postoperative analgesia was better with bupivacaine group.