Why are hip fractures in the elderly so deadly?
In: Biology
Think of daily body tasks like juggling balls, but the older you get the more delicate the balance of these balls is, and the more fragile the balls become. One wrong move and you drop them and they break. A broken hip brings all normal body tasks to a halt because you’re stuck laying in bed. That’s enough to drop all your glass balls: you’re no longer mobile so things in the body stop working. Your ability to clear your lungs especially goes down and pneumonia can set in pretty easily. Your bowels move slower when you’re not walking around so you can get constipation issues and that can mess up other body systems real quick.
When you’re old enough, a broken hip means you’ll never walk again because your body will just kinda decay in the meantime.
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