Understanding and predicting outcomes for patients with hip fracture

Hip fractures are an unfortunately common injury, particularly affecting older people. Over 1,200 cases are managed in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh each year, and these numbers are rising. Most people receive an operation to fix their hip fracture, but the road to recovery is often long and fraught with difficulty for the frailest patients. Sadly, many people develop new disability after hip fracture, and up to 1 in 4 have died within a year. In this study, we want to better understand which patients are at risk of harms and decline after hip fracture, and use data to develop prediction tools to help identify this group earlier in their recovery. To do this, we will combine audit data from the national Scottish Hip Fracture Audit, with local Lothian data from primary and secondary healthcare records. We will be able to look at longer term outcomes than are currently available in the national audit, which stops after 60 days of care. If our prediction tools are successful, we would work with NHS Lothian to provide these to clinicians early in a patient’s hip fracture admission, to help target high-intensity care and monitoring to those at the highest risk of decline.