Intravenous morphine titration as a rapid and efficient analgesia for adult patients with femoral shaft fractures after injury

Analgesics Administered for Pain During Hospitalization Following Lower Extremity Fracture: A Review of the Literature

Effective treatment of acute pain during hospitalization following lower extremity fracture is critical to improve short-term patient outcomes including wound healing, stress response, hospital length of stay, and cost as well as minimizing long-term negative patient outcomes such as delayed return to work, disability, and chronic pain. As many patients report moderate to severe pain during hospitalization, identifying the analgesics that most effectively reduces pain is a priority to improve patient outcomes. The purpose of this review was to examine published studies describing patient response to analgesics administered orally (PO) or intravenously (IV) in the immediate hospitalization following lower extremity fracture. PubMed was queried for articles published through May 2017 that included information on type of study, population, fracture site, pain measurement tool, analgesic, and result. Of 514 articles found, eight met the inclusion criteria. Analgesics administered PO or IV were fentanyl, hydromorphone, morphine, remifentanil, diclofenac, ibuprofen, ketorolac, and etoricoxib. Five of the studies focused on comparisons between one or more analgesics and three studies compared an IV analgesic to a regional anesthetic agent. Two studies compared different nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Bupivacaine, lignocaine, and levobupivacaine administered as regional nerve blocks were superior to controlling pain compared with IV fentanyl and IV hydromorphone. IV morphine provided faster and better pain relief compared with IV ibuprofen. Based on the limited data available, regional nerve blocks provided superior pain relief compared with opioids, and opioids provided superior pain relief compared with NSAIDs. Different NSAIDs provided similar pain relief.

Intravenous morphine titration vs. oral hydrocodone/acetaminophen for adults with lower extremity displaced fracture in an emergency department setting: A randomized controlled trial

The objective of the present study was to test the hypothesis that intravenous morphine titration provides superior analgesia to oral hydrocodone/acetaminophen for patients with lower extremity displaced fracture in an emergency department (ED) setting. A prospective, randomized clinical trial of ED patients suffering acute lower extremity displaced fracture pain was performed with a total of 206 participants included. After application of exclusion criteria, the cohort comprised 166 patients, 85 of which were randomly allocated to the oral hydrocodone/acetaminophen (5 mg/500 mg) group and 81 to the intravenous morphine titration (every 5 min by 3-mg increments) group. The main outcome was the visual analogue scale (VAS) at different time-points after the first dose of analgesic was administered. Secondary outcomes included the VAS change during the skeletal traction operation and short-term adverse events. The results demonstrated that the initial VSA of the participants was similar at the baseline on arrival at the ED (P=0.2582). At the time-points of 5, 15, 30 min after the first dose of analgesic administered, the intravenous morphine titration group exhibited a greater VAS reduction compared with that in the oral hydrocodone/acetaminophen group (P<0.01). The differences between the 2 groups were not statistically significant at 1 h or thereafter. The incidence of short-term adverse events was similar between the 2 groups but sedation, whose incidence in the morphine group was markedly increased, may not be arbitrarily attributed to adverse events. It was concluded that, compared with oral hydrocodone/acetaminophen, intravenous morphine titration provided a rapid and sufficient pain relief and equivalent short-term adverse events for patients with lower extremity displaced fracture in an ED setting.