The FINOF Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The FINOF(Femoral Nerve-Block Intervention in Neck Of Femur Fracture) Study
IRAS ID
67221
Contact name
Opinder Sahota
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
NHS R&D Offfice
Eudract number
2010-023871-25
ISRCTN Number
n/a
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
n/a
Research summary
Hip fracture is one of the most serious injuries that occur in older people. These fractures are very painful and traditionally require potent opioid/opioid related analgesia, which although effective, has undesired adverse events. Common side-effects include nausea, vomiting, constipation, and more infrequently, but importantly, delirium. Patient may then refuse treatment and remain in pain or in some cases find if they lie in bed, remain painfree, but struggle during ambulation. This leads to further complications, impaired rehabilitation and prolonged hospital stay. Techniques which directly involve numbing the nerves around the hip, have been proposed as an alternative and practical method of alleviating both rest and dynamic pain (important when patients are being transferred or ambulating). However no study has evaluated numbing of the main nerve in the leg (femoral nerve) and the effects on overall pain control, rehabilitation and issues of compliance, acceptability to staff / patients compared to standard analgesic regimes.We plan to undertake a 12 month randomised controlled study of 150 elderly patients admitted with an acute hip fracture. Subjects on admission, following informed consent will be randomly allocated to a nerve block, followed by a continuous nerve block infusion or standard analgesic care. We envisage nerve block analgesia compared to conventional analgesia will result in fewer drug related adverse events, earlier recovery, shorter length of stay in hospital and overall, improved quality of life for patients suffering with an acute hip fracture.Acceptability and implementation will be measured by semi-structured interviews with both staff and patients focusing around pain (patient group) and ease of use (staff group) which will help the implementation of these findings across the country.
REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 2 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
10/H0408/113
Date of REC Opinion
28 Jan 2011
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion