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

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 I&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 & 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.

Femoral block,Bupivacaine,Ropivacaine