Background: Pneumonia is a common complication in older people who are hospitalized to treat different fractures, which increases morbimortality in this population.
Objectives: Estimating the pneumonia incidence density in older people hospitalized to treat femoral fractures and identifying risk factors for this infection.
Methods: Prospective cohort study whose data were collected from a population of older people who were being treated for femoral fractures at a hospital in the central region of Brazil between September 2016 and February 2017. The pneumonia diagnosis was based on radiography and clinical tests. Incidence density was estimated according to gender, age, Charlson comorbidity index, polypharmacy, chronic pulmonary disease, admission to the intensive care unit, surgical treatment, and nasoenteral tube feeding. Magnitude of the associations was estimated by multiple Poisson regression.
Results: Among the 200 patients, the pneumonia incidence density was 13.04/1,000 person-days. For men and older people 80 years old or older, the pneumonia incidence density was 15.6/1,000 person-days and 18.3/1,000 person-days, respectively. After adjusting for age, gender, chronic pulmonary disease, and admission to the intensive care unit, use of nasoenteral tubes remained associated with occurrence of pneumonia in older people, and the risk of developing the infection was eight times higher in the population who received nasoenteral feeding than that calculated for the population that did not use the devices (p ≤ 0.001).
Conclusion: Using nasoenteral tubes during hospital stays increased the risk of developing pneumonia in hospitalized older people, which reinforces the need for continuous care monitoring regarding use of tubes to prevent complications.
Keywords: Aged; Femoral fractures; Geriatric nursing; Hospitalization; Pneumonia.
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