Does shorter time-to-surgery reduce mortality and post-operative complications in elderly patients with proximal femoral fractures?
In elderly patients with proximal femoral fractures, time-to-surgery does not impact mortality but may influence the types of post-operative complications experienced.
Although this study found a trend toward more frequent post-operative complications in the longest time-to-surgery group, there was no effect of time-to-surgery on mortality. Shorter time-to-surgery may be associated with somewhat lower rates of post-operative complications such as decubitus ulcers, urinary tract infections, thromboses, pneumonia and cardiovascular events, and with somewhat higher rates of others such as post-operative bleeding or implant complications.
Smektala et al. (Mon,) studied this question.