Saturday 13 December 2014

Long article chosen for the December 2014 #GeriMedJC.

What does a long article mean?  In the live version of the Geriatric Medicine Journal Club held at the University of Toronto, the first 45 minutes of the hour is devoted to the presentation and discussion of the article.

Hip fracture is an important cause of mortality in the elderly. When cumulative mortality at on year among hip fracture patients is about 25-35%, should we be identifying and quantifying the impact of pre-operatively risk factors? This systematic review and meta-analysis attempts to achieve this.

Smith T, Pelpola K, Ball M, Ong A, Myint PK. Pre-operative indicators for mortality following hip fracture surgery: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Age Ageing. 2014 Jul;43(4):464-71. 

The full text of the article can be found here and the abstract is posted below.

Engage in the discussion on Twitter on December 19, 2014 at 08:00 EST / 13:00 GMT and don't forget to use the hashtag #GeriMedJC.

OBJECTIVE:
hip fracture is a common and serious condition associated with high mortality. This study aimed to identify pre-operative characteristics which are associated with an increased risk of mortality after hip fracture surgery.

DESIGN:
systematic search of published and unpublished literature databases, including EMBASE, MEDLINE, AMED, CINAHL, PubMed and the Cochrane Library, was undertaken to identify all clinical studies on pre-operative predictors of mortality after surgery in hip fracture with at least 3-month follow-up. Data pertaining to the study objectives was extracted by two reviewers independently. Where study homogeneity was evidence, a meta-analysis of pooled relative risk and 95% confidence intervals was performed for mortality against pre-admission characteristics.

RESULTS:
fifty-three studies including 544,733 participants were included. Thirteen characteristics were identified as possible pre-operative indicators for mortality. Following meta-analysis, the four key characteristics associated with the risk of mortality up to 12 months were abnormal ECG (RR: 2.00; 95% CI: 1.45, 2.76), cognitive impairment (RR: 1.91; 95% CI: 1.35, 2.70), age >85 years (RR: 0.42; 95% CI: 0.20, 0.90) and pre-fracture mobility (RR: 0.13; 95% CI: 0.05, 0.34). Other statistically significant pre-fracture predictors of increased mortality were male gender, being resident in a care institution, intra-capsular fracture type, high ASA grade and high Charlson comorbidity score on admission.

CONCLUSIONS:
this review has identified the characteristics of patients with a high risk of mortality after a hip fracture surgery beyond the peri-operative period who may benefit from comprehensive assessment and appropriate management.


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