Prediction of postoperative mortality in elderly patient with hip fractures: a single-centre, retrospective cohort study

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BackgroundElderly patients are at high risk for postoperative complications and increased mortality after hip fracture (HF) surgery due to frailty and co-morbidities. The prediction of postoperative outcome could be used for clinical decision making. A reliable score to predict postoperative mortality after HF surgery in this sub-population remains unavailable.MethodsA single-centre retrospective cohort study was performed in 782 patients who were operated on for HF. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC)-curves were used to analyse the performance of gender, age, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and C-reactive protein (CRP) at admission (D0) as prognostic factors, alone or combined with the PreOperative Score to predict PostOperative Mortality (POSPOM) in univariate and multivariate linear regression models.ResultsNo correlation between gender, age, NLR D0 or CRP D0 and postoperative, intra-hospital mortality was found. The Area Under the ROC-curve (AUC) for age, male gender, NLR and CRP were 0.61 [95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.45–0.61], 0.56 [95% CI = 0.42–0.56], 0.47 [95% CI = 0.29–0.47] and 0.49 [95% CI = 0.31–0.49] respectively. Combination with the POSPOM score did not increase its discriminative capacity as neither age (AUC = 0.69, 95% CI = 0.54–0.69), gender (AUC = 0.72, 95% CI = 0.58–0.72), NLR D0 (AUC = 0.71, 95% CI = 0.56–0.71), nor the CRP D0 (AUC = 0.71, 95% CI = 0.58–0.71) improved the POSPOM performance.ConclusionsNeither age, gender, NLR D0 nor CRP D0 are suitable parameters to predict postoperative, intra-hospital mortality in elderly patients undergoing surgery for HF.