The American surgeon
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Pain control is an important aspect of rib fracture management. With a rise in multimodal care approaches, we hypothesized that transdermal lidocaine patches reduce opioid utilization in hospitalized patients with acute rib fractures not requiring continuous opioid infusion. ⋯ In admitted trauma patients with acute rib fractures not requiring continuous intravenous opiates, lidocaine patch use was associated with a significant decrease in opiate utilization during the patients' hospital course.