Why are hip fractures in the elderly so deadly?
In: Biology
Nurse here. It often leads to a lengthy hospital admission which is a dangerous place to be, particularly for older adults. Things like hospital acquired pneumonia and sepsis is very common. There is also deconditioning, pressure injuries and blood clots caused by immobility. Then there’s delirium caused by opiates or a UTI that ends up as urosepsis. I haven’t even touched on the surgical and assosciated infection risks.There’s just so many things I could talk about that can and do go wrong among older adults in hospitals. Throwing a fracture in the mix is sadly a death sentence for most older adults
Edit: Not exactly ELI5 but I’m sure you understand
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