Hip fracture surgery performed out-of-hours-A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Introduction: . Early hip fracture surgery (<48 hours) has shown to improve mortality for geriatric patients and is recommended in national hip fracture guidelines. However, this may be at the expense of surgery being performed out-of-hours where concerns about mortality risk exist. A systematic review and meta-analysis were performed to determine the mortality risk for hip fracture surgery performed in-hours (IH) compared to out-of-hours (OH), and on weekdays (WD) compared to weekends (WE).

Materials and methods: . A systematic search of literature in the databases of MEDLINE, PubMed, Embase and Cochrane from the dates of inception was performed. All studies published in English were included. Risk of Bias in Non-randomised Studies (ROBINS-I) and the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations (GRADE) framework were utilised. Relative risk (RR) was used for dichotomous outcomes, while mean difference (MD) was used for continuous variables, with 95% confidence intervals. Alpha was set at 0.05.

Results: . A total of 13 studies with 177,090 patients were included for analysis. Overall, there was no statistically significant difference for 30-day or inpatient mortality in IH vs OH groups (RR 0.93, p=0.46 and RR 1.16, p=0.63) and for WD vs WE groups (RR 0.98, p=0.73 and RR 0.76, p=0.67). There was no difference in length of stay between groups (p>0.05). The number of patients with American Society of Anaesthesiology (ASA) physical status classification ≥3 and male gender between the groups were similar (p>0.05).

Conclusion: . Performing hip fracture surgery OH or on the WE does not appear to increase the risk of 30-day or inpatient mortality or post-operative complications. Consideration should be given to performing hip fracture surgery out-of-hours to meet national guidelines (<48 hours).

Keywords: After-hours care; Hip fractures; Out-of-hours; Weekend, Mortality.