Patients who have suffered a hip fracture are more likely to die if they are kept waiting for over four hours in A&E, research suggests. A study estimated that one extra death occurs within 90 days of injury for every 36 patients who wait longer than the national standard for treatment. They also tropically spent a day longer in hospital than those seen within four hours.
The analysis looked at more than 3,200 hip fracture patients aged 50 and over who attended a trauma centre in Lothian, Scotland, between January 2019 and the end of June 2022. Study leader Dr Nicholas Clement, from the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and the University of Edinburgh, said emergency department waiting times had increased across the UK since the pandemic. READ MORE: Winter Fuel Payment cuts leave me fearing for our elderly this winter He added: “We thought we’d look at our hip fracture patients that are more frail than the standard patients that arrives.
..and sure enough, their length of stay and mortality is increased if they spent longer than four hours in the emergency department.
“It’s kind of understandable – you spend longer on a trolley, the analgesia might not be quite as good, you might be a bit more dehydrated rather than being on the ward.” One in three patients in the study waited longer than four hours in A&E. Participants were followed up for more than 500 days and, during this time, 1,314 patients died.
Those who waited too long were 29 percent more likely to die within .