Patients with fractured ribs necessarily suffer from severe chest pain, which prevents coughing, deep breathing and bronchial toilette, cause atelectasis and pulmonary shunting. Relief of chest pain is beneficial to patients, providing comfort
and
tacilitating physiotherapy and effective expectoration. We compared the efficacy of pain relief between continuous epidural analgesia and conventional intramuscular analgesia in 20 patients with fractured ribs. Among 20 patients, epidural
analgesia
was
done for 10 patients(experimental group)and the remainder ten received intramuscular analgesia(control group). The pain and ROM(range of motion)scores, vital sign, PaOw, forced vital capacity(FVC)and forced expiratory volume for I second(FEVI)
were
checked on immediate admission and 12, 24 hours, third, fifth, and seventh day after starting of continuous epidural block. The pain and ROM scores were decreased and the PaO2, FRC and FEVl were significantly increased in Experimental group. The
side
effects of epidural analgesia were mild and reversible.
With these result, we can suggest that epidural analgesia is more effective for pain relief and restoration of pulmonary mechanics in patients with fractured ribs.
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