ORthopaedic trauma hospital outcomes - Patient operative delays (ORTHOPOD) Study: The management of day-case orthopaedic trauma in the United Kingdom

ORTHOPOD: Linking ambulatory future trauma injury distribution from fragility proximal femur fracture caseload

INTRODUCTION

The age of those experiencing traumatic injury and requiring surgery increases. The majority of this increase seen in older patients having operations after accidents is in fragility proximal femur fractures (FPFF). This study designed a model to predict the distribution of fractures suitable for ambulatory trauma list provision based on the number of FPFF patients.

METHODS

The study utilized two datasets which both had data from 64 hospitals. One derived from the ORTHOPOD study dataset, and the other from National Hip Fracture Database. The model tested the predictability of 12 common fracture types based on FPFF data from the two datasets, using linear regression and K-fold cross-validation.

RESULTS

The predictive model showed some promise. Evaluation of the model with mean RMSE and Std RMSE demonstrated good predictive performance for some fracture types, although the r-squared values showed that large variation in these fracture types was not always captured by the model. The study highlighted the dominance of FPFFs, and the strong correlation between these and numbers of ankle and distal radius fractures at a given unit.

DISCUSSION

It is possible to model the numbers of ankle and distal radius fractures based off the number of patients admitted with hip fractures. This has great significance given the drive for increased day case utilisation and bed pressures across health services. While the model's current predictability was limited, with methodological improvements and additional data, a more robust predictive model could be developed to aid in the restructuring of trauma networks and improvement of patient care and surgical outcomes.

Early surgery improves survival after femoral fractures in the elderly: A retrospective review of 502 fragility fractures

AIMS

Fragility fractures are a growing global healthcare burden; fragility fractures of the femur have been shown to occur in a highly comorbid patient group, with parallels to hip fracture patients. This study aimed to investigate if early surgery for femoral fractures, distal to the hip, resulted in a reduction in mortality in patients over 65 years of age.

METHODS

A retrospective review of prospectively collected data for all consecutive femoral fractures in patients aged over 65 years who underwent surgical management between January 2000 and December 2018. Data was extracted from the Fracture Outcomes Research Database (FORD) and analysed to assess if early surgery, defined as occurring within 48 h of hospital admission with a fragility femur fracture, had an effect on 30 day and 1 year mortality.

RESULTS

502 eligible patients were included; median follow up time was 57 months. 24 patients (4.7%) died within 30 days of surgery and 105 patients (20.9%) had died within 1 year of surgery. Patients who underwent surgery within 48 h of admission had a significantly reduced chance of mortality within 1 year of surgery compared to patients who had surgery more than 48 h after admission (OR = 0.401, 95% CI 0.25-0.65, p<0.001). Following Multivariate Cox Regression analysis the hazard ratio of 1 year mortality following early surgery remained significantly reduced (HR = 0.57, 95% CI 0.36-0.92, p = 0.020).

CONCLUSIONS

This study demonstrates that fragility femoral fracture patients represent a similar cohort to hip fracture patients, with high mortality rates. We recommend that hip fracture management principles are also employed for fragility femoral fractures in patients over 65 years, with rapid pre-operative optimisation to ensure these patients undergo early surgical intervention.

Lack of regional pathways impact on surgical delay: Analysis of the Orthopaedic Trauma Hospital Outcomes-Patient Operative Delays (ORTHOPOD) study

INTRODUCTION

Current practice following injury within the United Kingdom is to receive surgery, at the institution of first contact regardless of ability to provide timely intervention and inconsiderate of neighbouring hospital resource and capacity. This can lead to a mismatch of demand and capacity, delayed surgery and stress within hospital systems, particularly with regards to elective services. We demonstrate through a multicentre, multinational study, the impact of this at scale.

METHODOLOGY

ORTHOPOD data collection period was between 22/08/2022 and 16/10/2022 and consisted of two arms. Arm 1 captured orthopaedic trauma caseload and capacity in terms of sessions available per centre and patients awaiting surgery per centre per given week. Arm 2 recorded patient and injury demographics, time of decision making, outpatient and inpatient timeframes as well as time to surgery. Hand and spine cases were excluded. For this regional comparison, regional trauma networks with a minimum of four centres enroled onto the ORTHOPOD study were exclusively analysed.

RESULTS

Following analysis of 11,202 patient episodes across 30 hospitals we found no movement of any patient between hospitals to enable prompt surgery. There is no current system to move patients, between regional centres despite clear discrepancies in workload per capacity across the United Kingdom. Many patients wait for days for surgery when simple transfer to a neighbouring hospital (within 10 miles in many instances) would result in prompt care within national guidelines.

CONCLUSION

Most trauma patients in the United Kingdom are managed exclusively at the place of first presentation, with no consideration of alternative pathways to local hospitals that may, at that time, offer increased operative capacity and a shorter waiting time. There is no oversight of trauma workload per capacity at neighbouring hospitals within a regional trauma network. This leads to a marked disparity in waiting time to surgery, and subsequently it can be inferred but not proven, poorer patient experience and outcomes. This inevitably leads to a strain on the overall trauma system and across several centres can impact on elective surgery recovery. We propose the consideration of inter-regional network collaboration, aligned with the Major Trauma System.