RAPID2

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Randomised trial of clinical and cost effectiveness of Administration of Prehospital fascia Iliaca compartment block for emergency hip fracture care Delivery

• IRAS ID

  291853

• Contact name

  Helen Snooks

• Contact email

  h.a.snooks@swansea.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Swansea University

• Duration of Study in the UK

  4 years, 1 months, 31 days

• Research summary

  Hip fractures are a very common injury for elderly people. Pain relief before the patient reaches hospital is often inadequate and causes side effects which may slow down recovery. We have recently completed a small study testing whether a local anaesthetic injection into the hip area called Fascia Iliaca Compartment Block (FICB) given by paramedics at the scene of injury is safe and acceptable, which concluded that it is feasible to undertake a full trial.
  We aim to find out whether the local anaesthetic injection reduces pain, is safe, and improves patient health outcomes, as well as how much it costs the National Health Service (NHS).
  We will carry out a trial where paramedics give patients either the new treatment - local anaesthetic injection or usual care (often morphine).
  We will provide training for the paramedics, so that they can perform the local anaesthetic injection safely. When a trained paramedic attends a patient assessed as having a hip fracture, (s)he will use a scratchcard to decide which treatment to give the patient. We will compare patients’ pain levels, other health outcomes, safety and costs between those allocated to the new local anaesthetic injection and those allocated to receive usual care.
  We will carry out the trial in areas within four ambulance services in England and Wales, where a local Emergency Department (ED) has agreed to participate in the research. We will recruit and train 44 paramedics in each ambulance service. We aim to recruit 1400 patients to the study, so that we can detect a difference in improvement in levels of pain of about 10%, which the public and clinical members of our research team agreed would be important to patients.

• REC name

  Wales REC 4

• REC reference

  21/WA/0175

• Date of REC Opinion

  6 Aug 2021

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion