Accelerated Care of Patients with Hip Fractures is Associated with Lower Risk of Delirium and Infection, and a Shorter Length of Hospital Stay: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Level One Evidence

Objectives

The aim of this systematic review was to assess the impact of time to surgery on patient mortality, peri-operative complication rates and length of stay following a hip fracture using level one data.

Data Sources

Multiple databases (PubMed, Embase, Medline (Ovid), and Cochrane Library) were searched using terms for "hip fracture" and the intervention "early surgery". Results were filtered to only included randomised controlled trials in the English language published from the year 2000.

Study Selection

All results were imported into Covidence and screened by two separate reviewers with conflicts resolved by a third reviewer. Studies were included if they reported data on the relationship between time to theatre and at least one of the outcome measures (mortality, peri-operative complications, and length of stay in hospital). Three papers were finalised to include in this review.

Data Extraction

Once selected, each paper had a bias assessment completed by two separate reviewers using the Cochrane RoB2 tool. Any conflicts were resolved by a third reviewer.

Data Synthesis

Data from each paper were inputted into RevMan5 for analysis. Approximated sample mean and standard deviation were collected from each paper and included for analysis. RevMan5 was then used to generate forest plots and report data on relative risk and mean difference.

Conclusions

This review has shown that accelerated care of patients with hip fractures was associated with lower risks of delirium and infection, and a shorter length of hospital stay. However, the effect of time to surgery on patient mortality is not clear, as the standard care group had a lower mortality than expected for the population at risk and had surgery on average within 24-h of presentation.

The impact of COVID-19 on the management and outcomes of patients with proximal femoral fractures: a multi-centre study of 580 patients

Background

On the 11th March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. Multiple new guidelines were proposed and existing models of social, domestic and hospital care altered. Most healthcare systems were largely unprepared for this, and the pandemic has tested their adaptability. This study aimed to assess the impact of COVID-19 on the demographics, presentation, clinical management and outcomes of patients with proximal femoral (hip) fractures comparing them to a similar cohort of patients admitted a year earlier.

Methods

This retrospective multi-centre cohort study compared all patients admitted with hip fractures between 1st March and 30th May 2019 (group PC: pre-COVID-19) with hip fracture patients admitted over the same time period during the pandemic in 2020 (group C: COVID-19). The data was obtained from the hospitals’ local and National Hip Fracture Databases. Mortality data was checked with the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Primary outcomes were time to theatre, in-patient length of stay and 30-day mortality.

Results

A total of 580 patients were included (304 group PC, 276 group C). Patient demographics including Charlson Comorbidity Index and Nottingham Hip Fracture Scores were broadly similar across the two cohorts. There was a significant reduction in the percentage of total hip replacements (11 to 5%, p = 0.006) in group C. There was an increase in conservative management (1 to 5%, p = 0.002) in group C. Time to theatre was significantly delayed in group C (43.7 h) vs group PC (34.6 h) (p ≤ 0.001). The overall length of hospital stay was significantly longer in group PC (16.6 days) vs group C (15 days) (p = 0.025). The 30-day mortality rate in group C was 9.8% compared to 8.2% in group PC (p = 0.746), but for COVID-19 (+) patients, it was significantly higher at 38.2% vs 5.8% in COVID-19 (−) patients (p < 0.001).

Conclusion

This is one of the largest multi-centre comparative cohort study in the literature to date examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the management of hip fracture patients. Whilst mortality rates were similar in both groups, COVID-19-positive patients were almost seven times more likely to die, reflecting the seriousness of the COVID-19 infection and its sequelae in such elderly, vulnerable patients.