AB238. SOH26AB_0150. An audit examining the use of regional anaesthesia techniques in chest trauma patients in a designated trauma unit at Tallaght University Hospital
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AB238. SOH26AB_0150. An audit examining the use of regional anaesthesia techniques in chest trauma patients in a designated trauma unit at Tallaght University Hospital

Barra O’Byrne, Maria Whelan, Poorya Shokuhi, Nitish Dasmuth, Tom McIntyre, Michael Devine

Department of Surgery, Tallaght University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland

Background: Multimodal pain management, including the use of regional anaesthesia techniques, is key in the effective management of chest trauma patients to help reduce morbidity and mortality. As a designated trauma unit, we manage a high volume of chest trauma cases in Tallaght University Hospital (TUH), and this audit was designed to assess the deployment of regional anaesthesia techniques in such cases.

Methods: Cases of chest trauma presenting to our trauma unit in 2024 and 2025 were examined. These patient’s cases were reviewed to determine injuries sustained, extent of chest trauma sustained, whether regional aesthetic techniques were deployed in their pain management, if so what type of techniques and what timeframe after admission were such techniques deployed. The standard used to compare our data to was the University Hospitals Plymouth Blunt Chest Trauma Tool, published previously in the British Journal of Anaesthesia.

Results: Of the 99 recent cases included in our audit, 36 (36.4%) were treated with regional anaesthesia techniques during their stay. Twenty-four out of these 36 (66.7%) had such techniques deployed within 24 hours of admission, with 31 out of 36 (86.1%) being deployed within the first 48 hours of admission. Erector spinae plane (ESP) catheter blocks were the most common technique deployed (17/36, 47.2%). Ten out of 19 cases (52.3%) with flail segment received a regional anaesthesia technique.

Conclusions: There is potential to improve our performance when it comes to the appropriate deployment of regional aesthetic techniques in our unit. Our General Surgery Department, in collaboration with our Anaesthesiology Department, including the Acute Pain Team, is working on strategies to improve our performance in this area. Our next step will be re-auditing in 3–6 months to ensure an improvement is being made.

Keywords: Chest trauma; rib fracture; flail chest; analgesia; regional anaesthesia

Acknowledgments

None.

Footnote

Funding: None.

Conflicts of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical Statement: The authors are accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

doi: 10.21037/map-26-ab238
Cite this abstract as: O’Byrne B, Whelan M, Shokuhi P, Dasmuth N, McIntyre T, Devine M. AB238. SOH26AB_0150. An audit examining the use of regional anaesthesia techniques in chest trauma patients in a designated trauma unit at Tallaght University Hospital. Mesentery Peritoneum 2026;10:AB238.

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