Towards evidence based emergency medicine: best BETs from the Manchester Royal Infirmary. Epidural analgesia/anaesthesia versus systemic intravenous opioid analgesia in the management of blunt thoracic trauma.

A short cut review was carried out to establish whether an epidural infusion provided any advantage over intravenous analgesia in the management of blunt thoracic trauma. Only four papers presented evidence to answer the clinical question. The author, date and country of publication, patient group studied, study type, relevant outcomes, results and study weaknesses of this paper are presented in table 2. The clinical bottom line is that epidural analgesia may provide better pain relief, but may not alter clinical outcomes.