UC San Diego

A 46-year-old man presented with severe refractory posterior shoulder pain due to a left scapular fracture sustained during a motor vehicle collision. Despite multimodal oral and intravenous analgesics, the patients pain remained difficult to control. A continuous paravertebral nerve block was performed between the second and third thoracic vertebrae resulting in excellent analgesia of the scapular pain. This case suggests that a continuous thoracic paravertebral block placed between the second and third vertebrae may be considered as part of multimodal analgesia in patients with scapular fractures.