Demographics of Nonagenarians and Centenarians with a Hip Fracture

To the Editor: As the population that lives beyond its 90th birthday continuously grows, the incidence of fractured femoral neck (1–5) has increased commensurately. We present a descriptive, observational, retrospective study that characterized this group, focusing on hemoglobin values and transfusion requirements. We reviewed the charts of all patients older than 91 yr, admitted with a hip fracture between 2001 and 2004. We excluded the following patients: those with pathological or multiple fractures, those with terminal diseases, and those undergoing nonsurgical treatment. We gathered basic demographic data, comorbidities, hemoglobin levels at admission, preoperatively and postoperatively, days of delay until surgery, morbidity and mortality, use of red blood cells, and length of hospital stay. Table 1 summarizes the general characteristics of this population. Table 2 compares the characteristics of transfused and nontransfused patients. As expected, patients with anemia on admission were more likely to require transfusions (Fig. 1, Table 3). Admission and postoperative complication rates were not correlated with admission or postoperative hemoglobin (Table 4).Table 1: General Patient CharacteristicTable 2: Patients by Transfusion StatusFigure 1.: Distribution of admission hemoglobin in transfused and nontransfused patients.Table 3: Logistic Regression: Final Model for the Prediction of TransfusionTable 4: Influence of Hemoglobin on Morbidity and MortalityAndrés D. Pelavski, MD [email protected] María J. Colomina, PhD Marcos De Miguel Esther Marquez, MD Departments of Anaesthesia, Orthopaedics, and Traumatology Vall d′Hebron Hospital Area Barcelona, Spain Castellá Dolors, MD Blood Bank Vall d’Hebron Hospital Barcelona, Spain Margarita Aranda Department of Neonatology Virgen del Camino Hospital Barcelona, Spain