One-year mortality rates and factors affecting mortality after surgery for fracture neck of femur in the elderly.

CONTEXT

Fractures around hip in elderly are associated with significant morbidity and mortality.

AIM

This sudy aims to investigate 1-year mortality rates and risk factors associated with this mortality. Effect of delay in surgery on mortality rates will also be studied. Our null-hypothesis was that there is no association between common comorbid conditions or delay in surgery on 1-year mortality rates.

STUDY SETTINGS AND DESIGN

Patients 60-years and above who underwent operative treatment for fracture of neck of femur between January 2018 and February 2019 were included in this retrospective study.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Demographic and clinical data were collected from hospital information system and inpatient case records. Patients were followed up with quality of life (QoL) assessment with short form-12 (SF-12) at 1 year. Mortality during this period was also evaluated.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

Continuous factors were expressed as means, standard deviations. Different risk factors between the patients alive and dead were studied using Fisher's exact test.

RESULTS

Nineteen out of 95 patients died at the end of 1 year. Smoking, hypertension, diabetes, low hemoglobin, raised total leukocyte count, low serum albumin, delay in surgery (>1 week), higher American Society of Anesthesiologist grade, and postoperative blood transfusion were significantly associated with higher mortality rates. Mean SF-12 QoL scores at 1 year was 35.6 ± 6.3.

CONCLUSION

Hip fractures in elderly are associated with higher mortality rates. Results of this study indicate that patients at a higher risk of mortality may be identified and help in preoperative optimization with the aim to reduce mortality. However, these findings need to be verified by further studies with a relatively larger sample size and longer follow-up period.