Modernising Hip Fracture Anaesthesia

Hip fracture carries a 30-day mortality of around 8% in the United Kingdom. This figure has remained relatively unchanged despite modern developments in anaesthetic technique. These range from improvements in perioperative analgesia and mortality scoring systems, changes to intra-operative anaesthetic technique and strategies to reduce the requirement for blood transfusion. In this article, we review the current literature on the perioperative management of patients undergoing hip fracture surgery including some of the current controversies.