The application of enhanced recovery idea in surgery for traumatic rib fractures

Objective To explore the application of enhanced recovery idea in surgery for traumatic rib fractures. Methods 64 patients with traumatic rib fractures admitted to the Department of Thoracic Surgery, Honghui Hospital Affiliated to School of Medicine, Xi'an Jiaotong University from August 2017 to January 2018 were randomly selected . Patients were divided into two groups according to different surgical management, 28 cases of conventional treatment group and 36 cases of enhanced recovery group.The clinical data were analyzed and compared between the two groups, including incision length, operation time, intraoperative blood loss, postoperative visual analogue scale(VAS) score on first postoperative day, time to pull out chest closed drainage tube, maximal voluntary ventilation(MVV) on 3rd postoperative day , recovery time of gastrointestinal function, average length of hospital stay , and cost of hospitalization. Results The incision length and intraoperative blood lose of the enhanced recovery group improved significantly compared with the conventional treatment group (P 0.05). Compared with the conventional treatment group, the enhanced recovery group had lower postoperative VAS score on first postoperative day ; reduced time to pull out chest closed drainage tube ; had greater MVV on 3rd postoperative day; reduced the recovery time of gastrointestinal function; and as a result , also reduce the average length of hospital stay (P 0.05). Conclusions The enhanced recovery idea has absolute advantages in operation for traumatic rib fractures, and should be widely applied in clinical treatment. Key words: Rib fractures, Trauma; Enhanced recovery idea; Operation