Hip Fracture and COVID-19

Hip fracture in the elderly is a worldwide public health issue and a medical challenge for early postoperative rehabilitation. More than 2 million people are treated annually with an annual incidence between 100 and 300/100,000 (USA, Europe, China), resulting in a cost of billion dollars and a strain on most surgical facilities. In this context, an early surgical management of patient with fracture within the first 24-48h has been shown to reduce morbidity, length of hospital stay and mortality.

During the Covid-19 pandemics, a higher risk of 30-day mortality has been reported in patients with pre-operative SARS-CoV-2 infection diagnosed 0-2 weeks, 3-4 weeks and 5-6 weeks before surgery compared with patients who did not have a pre-operative SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, this risk seems to disappear in patients diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 ≥ 7 weeks before surgery. These findings led to propose delayed elective surgery when the benefit-risk ratio was acceptable (cancer, cardiac surgeries). However, delaying surgery in COVID-19 patients (with high risk of immune and thrombotic disorders) with hip fracture could be questionable as the risk related to COVID-19 could be counteracted by the risk delayed surgery.

For assessing the mortality risk related to hip fracture surgery associated with COVID-19, we decided to use the French national hospital discharge records database for comparing the 30-day postoperative mortality in patients with hip fracture and with or without an hospitalization for SARS-COV-2 infection in the 30 previous days before surgery.