Perioperative Cardiac Morbidity in Elderly Patients with Epidural versus Systemic Analgesia for Hip Fracture Surgery

. Patients with hip fracture are usually older patients. Uncontrolled acute pain and surgical stress in elderly patients may cause increased cardiac morbidity and mortality. Epidural analgesia blocks sympathetic nervous system and reduces the incidence of myocardial ischemia and dysrhythmias as well as the response to stress. Methods. Sixty patients with hip fracture older than 65 years with previously defined high peroperative cardiac risk according to ACC/AHA guidelines were included and were randomly assigned to two groups of 30 patients: SA group-patients with systemic analgesia. niflam 2 × 100 mg/iv and tramadol 1 mg/kg/iv every 8 hours; and EDC group-patients with a continuous epidural analgesia with bupivacaine 0.125%-5 ml/h and fentanyl 3 µg/ml. As end points of the study the incidence of cardiac events in both groups were registered: cardiac death, myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, unstable angina and new-onset atrial fibrillation. Laboratory parameters and pain intensity were determined in all patients by using Verbal Descriptive Scale. Side effects were also monitored. Results. The epidural analgesia decreased the incidence of peroperative cardiac events in patients with high per-operative cardiac risk for hip fracture surgery (46.6% in SA group vs. 15% in EDC group) and at the same time decreased cardiac mortality (10% in SA group vs. 0% in EDC group). The values of VDS were significantly lower in patients with EDC block versus patients with systemic analgesia in all experimental times and there was a smaller number of side effects. Conclusion. Early administration of continuous epidural analgesia in patients with high peroperative risk with hip fracture decreases the incidence of cardiac morbidity and mortality and provides superior pre- and post-operative analgesia compared to systemic analgesia with minimal side effects.