[The importance of primary operation from the point of view of mortality in patients with femoral neck fractures. I. Comparative study of mortality after primary and delayed operations. The part played by the patients age (author's transl)].

Authors with regard to primary or delayed surgical treatment analyse the mortality of 2,612 patients with proximal femur fractures treated in the National Institute of Traumatology during the years 1971--75. Within this material 2,055 case history of surgically treated femoral neck and pertrochanteric fractures are evaluated. An important difference in favour of primary intervention was found between the mortality of primary and delayed operations both in femoral neck and pertrochanteric fractures. In pertrochanteric fractures the mortality increased gradually starting from the day of injury. Regarding age related mortality, there was a significant difference in each age group in favour of primary operations. Thus the increased mortality encountered after delayed operations can't be explained by a selection with regard to age.