Effects of early treatment on mortality in one year in elderly patients with hip fractures

Objective: To observe the effects of early treatment in elderly patients with hip fractures in terms of mortality at one year. Method: In this retrospective observational cohort study we compared the difference in one year mortality between two groups of the patients who were operated for fractures of hip. This study was conducted on patients who were hospitalized and operated for hip fractures from January 2014 to December 2014. Patients were divided in two cohorts, cohort 1 included patients who were operated within 24 hours of getting fracture and patients who were operated after 3 days of injury. All patients followed at one year of treatment via phone calls and emails. Inclusion criteria were patients with either sex, older than 60 years of age with diagnosis of hip fracture confirmed by history, clinical examination and radiographs. Patients below age of 60 years, having pathological fractures, acetabulum fractures, bilateral hip fractures, prior surgery on same hip or previous ipsilateral hip fracture were excluded. Result: Total 445 patients were hospitalized with hip fractures, cohort 1 included 190(42.69%) patients who underwent for surgery within 24 hours of injury, and 115(25.84%) were those patients who were operated after three days of injury included in cohort 2. These two groups were comparable in gender, age distribution and types of operation. Mortality in group one is 15.7% and in group 2 is 29.56%, there is increase of 13.86% in the mortality of patients in cohort 2. Conclusion: This study shows that survival at 1 year is better when patients who were presented earlier and were operated within first 24 hours of injury.