For your hip fracture, we would like to offer a nerve block for pain control. This is an injection of anesthesia around the nerve that is responsible for all the pain sensation from your hip joint. We do this frequently in the Emergency Department and the benefits are good and the risks are few.
The main benefit is that a nerve block can give good pain relief for a long time (sometimes up to 72 hours) without opioid pain medications which have many possible bad effects – from constipation, to interfering with your breathing or even leading to addiction.
The risks from nerve blocks are rare. But occasionall you can have:
- temporary or permanent nerve injury
- a blood collection at the injection sitecalled a “hematoma”
- Toxicity from the local anesthetic. This is very rare and we will treat you with a specific medication called INTRALIPID in the rare case this happens.
- anesthesia. Your healthcare team will be prepared to treat it if it happens