Waiting more than 4 hours in emergency care for treatment is linked to heightened risks of death and a longer hospital stay for hip fracture patients, reveals a single center study, published online in Emergency Medicine Journal . The waiting time for more than one in three of these patients exceeded the 4-hour national standard, which now requires that 76% of emergency department patients must either be discharged or admitted to hospital within that time frame. By the age of 80, an estimated third of women and 17% of men will have fractured a hip—figures which are slated to likely double by 2033, explain the researchers.
Early surgery is associated with lower risks of death and perioperative complication rates, but with emergency department waiting times currently lengthening across the UK and elsewhere, it's highly likely that hip fracture surgery may end up being delayed, they add. To assess the potential impact on hip fracture patients of 4+ hour waits in the emergency department, the researchers retrospectively evaluated local hip fracture database entries for all patients aged at least 50, admitted to a single trauma center between 1 January 2019 and 30 June 2022, and subsequently monitored for at least eight months until February 2023. The trauma center in question serves a population of 916,310 people in Lothian, Scotland and manages more than 1,000 hip fractures annually.
Details on demographics, treatment, progress through the service, and death were collected fro.
