Nerve Block Pain Relief for Older People with Multiple Rib Injuries: An Evaluation

The study will conduct a retrospective review of approximately 350 electronic medical records, for the period between January 2020 and December 2025, of patients aged 65 years and older, who sustained unilateral multiple rib fractures, and were referred to the Acute Pain Service (APS) for ongoing pain management. Each patient record will be reviewed to gather data on demographics, admission details, clinical presentation, pain management strategies, clinical outcomes, as well as functional and discharge outcomes.  Following data collection, patient demographic and clinical characteristics will be summarised and examined in relation to pain scores, patterns of analgesic use, and other relevant clinical outcomes. Primary and secondary outcomes will be compared between patients who received regional anaesthesia and those managed with multimodal analgesia alone. Descriptive statistics, including means, standard deviations, medians, interquartile ranges, frequencies, and percentages, will be used as appropriate to summarise explanatory variables and outcome measures. Multivariable linear and logistic regression analyses will be undertaken to evaluate associations between key patient characteristics (including age, sex, admission functional status, and fracture site) and clinical outcomes such as pain intensity, analgesic requirements, respiratory function, incidence of pneumonia, discharge functional status, and length of stay in hospital and the intensive care unit (ICU).