30-day mortality after hip fracture surgery: Influence of postoperative factors

The 30-day mortality rate after hip fracture surgery has been considered as an indirect indicator of the quality of care. The aim of this work is to analyse preoperative and postoperative factors potentially related to early 30-day mortality in patients over 65 undergoing hip fracture surgery.

Prospective cohort study including all consecutive primary hip fracture patients over 65 admitted to Trauma and Orthopaedics department from January 1, 2018 to December 31, 2019. Bed-ridden, non- surgically treated patients, and high energy trauma or tumoral aetiology fractures were excluded. A total of 943 patients were eligible (attrition rate: 2.1%). Follow-up included 30-days after discharge. We noted the 30-day mortality after hip fracture surgery, analysing 130 potentially related variables including biodemographic, fracture-related, preoperative, and postoperative clinical factors. Qualitative variables were assessed by χ2, and quantitative variables by non-parametric tests. Odds ratio determined by binary logistic regression. We selected preventable candidate variables for multivariate risk assessment by logistic regression.

A total of 923 patients were enrolled (mean age 86.22±6.8, 72.9% women). The 30-day mortality rate was 6.0%. We noted significant increased mortality on men (OR = 2.381[1.371-4.136], p = 0.002), ageing patients (ORyear = 1.073[1.025-1.122], p = 0.002), and longer time to surgery (ORday = 1.183[1.039-1146], p<0.001), on other 20 preoperative clinical variables, like lymphopenia (lymphocyte count <103/μl, OR = 1.842[1.063-3.191], p = 0.029), hypoalbuminemia (≤3.5g/dl, OR = 2.474[1.316-4.643], p = 0.005), and oral anticoagulant intake (OR = 2.499[1.415-4.415], p = 0.002), and on 25 postoperative clinical variables, like arrhythmia (OR = 13.937[6.263-31.017], p<0.001), respiratory insufficiency (OR = 7.002[3.947-12.419], p<0.001), hyperkalaemia (OR = 10.378[3.909-27.555], p<0.001), nutritional supply requirement (OR = 3.576[1.894-6.752], p = 0.021), or early arthroplasty dislocation (OR = 6.557[1.206-35.640], p = 0.029). We developed a predictive model for early mortality after hip fracture surgery based on postoperative factors with 96.0% sensitivity and 60.7% specificity (AUC = 0.863).

We revealed that not only preoperative, but also postoperative factors have a great impact after hip fracture surgery. The influence of post-operative factors on 30-day mortality has a logical basis, albeit so far they have not been identified or quantified before. Our results provide an advantageous picture of the 30-day mortality after hip fracture surgery.