Comorbidity and functional outcomes after hip fracture: an umbrella review protocol

The objective of the review is to examine the association between comorbidity and functional outcomes after hip fracture.

Patients who have suffered a hip fracture are at risk of poor functional recovery, which may be influenced by factors such as age, functional status at baseline, and comorbid conditions. Patients recovering from a hip fracture seldom present without other comorbid conditions. This proposed review will lead to a better understanding of the association between comorbidity and functional recovery after hip fracture and will assist in the medical support of patients recovering from these injuries.

Systematic reviews that include cohort studies reporting on comorbidity and functional outcomes after hip fracture in adults (≥ 18 years old) published at any time will be included. Study protocols, papers that are not systematic reviews, papers not reporting on comorbidities or functional outcomes, and papers published in languages other than English will be excluded from the review.

The JBI methodology for umbrella reviews will be followed. MEDLINE, Embase, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews will be searched. Two reviewers will screen the titles and abstracts against the eligibility criteria. Data extraction will be performed by 2 independent reviewers on the reviews selected for inclusion. Extracted study characteristics will include the author, year published, databases searched, number of studies/patients included, comorbidity measures, functional outcomes, presence of meta-analysis, and bias appraisal results. The quality of included studies will be reported using the JBI critical appraisal checklist for systematic reviews and research syntheses. A summary of the extracted data will be presented in tabular format and a narrative synthesis will be performed on the collected systematic reviews that meet the inclusion criteria.

PROSPERO CRD42021272502.