Background
delirium, tractions, pain, fractures, trauma
COMPLICATIONS
Hip fractures are common in orthopedic trauma, and current practice and literature suggests improved outcomes with early operation [In addition, patients with severe pain during hospitalization are at higher risk for experiencing delirium and other post-operative complications [Wennberg et al. reported that supplementation with low dose fascia iliaca compartment block, in addition to analgesia (intravenous morphine and oral paracetamol) provided better preoperative pain relief in 27% of patients with hip fractures within two hours compared with placebo [Multiple studies in the literature have reported the neutral effect of skin traction application on preoperative pain relief in patients with hip fractures [Despite this evidence, skin traction is routinely applied in many hospitals as a preoperative pain management technique [To the best of our knowledge, skin traction’s effect on pain relief in patients with specifically intertrochanteric fractures (as the most common type of hip fractures) has been discussed in only two other studies in the literature [We analyzed this effect via a parallel randomized controlled trial in this study. The null hypothesis of this research is that there would be no significant differences in terms of the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) score and administered morphine dosage between the patients who underwent skin tractions and the control group (without skin-traction).