Analgesia Reverses Abnormal Lung Function Tests in Patients with Blunt Chest Injury

Aim: To evaluate the effect of analgesia for chest pain control in multiple rib fractures in adult blunt chest trauma patients in terms of improvement in ventilatory function, reversal of abnormal lung function test parameters at different periods of analgesia.

Methodology: Prospective study of 64 adult patients with blunt chest injury.

Results: There were 64 adult patients with blunt chest trauma studied with male-female ratio 8.4:1.5; dominated by young adults and middle age (92.2%). Commercial motorcyclists and tricyclists, all males, accounted for 62.5% of the patients (p=0.0001) and motorcycle and tricycle accidents accounted for 78.1% of the causes (p=0.005).

Respiratory function was adversely affected by chest pain and got improved when the pain was controlled as shown by the following respective pre and post analgesic means of percent predicted lung function test parameters with statistical significance: FVC (80.3% vs. 93.3%), FEV1 (79.7% vs. 93.5%), FEV1/FVC ratio (FEV1%) (79.9% vs. 90.6%), FEF (84.8% vs. 92.2%), and FEF 25-75 (79.9% vs. 92.0%). Before analgesic, 44 (68.7%) of the patients rated their chest pain as severe, but by one hour after the first dose of analgesic only four (6.3%) patients still had severe chest pain (p < 0.0001) and at 24 hours the difference in chest pain improvement was also statistically significant (p=0.02).

Conclusion: Analgesic is capable of reversing the abnormal lung function test parameters associated with chest pain of blunt chest injury.