Regional analgesia in the emergency department for hip fractures: survey of current UK practice and its impact on services in a teaching hospital

While the benefits of regional analgesia (RA) for preoperative pain relief in hip fracture (HF) in elderly patients are well recognised, this service is yet to be established in many UK emergency departments (EDs). We set out to discover how widely RA is adopted in the UK EDs.In April-July 2010, we conducted a postal survey of 218 UK EDs, followed up with fax reminders for non-respondents.A total of 147/218 (67%) EDs completed the survey. Sixty...