Accelerated Care of Patients with Hip Fractures is Associated with Lower Risk of Delirium and Infection, and a Shorter Length of Hospital Stay: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Level One Evidence

ObjectivesThe aim of this systematic review was to assess the impact of time to surgery on patient mortality, peri-operative complication rates and length of stay following a hip fracture using level one data.Data SourcesMultiple databases (PubMed, Embase, Medline (Ovid), and Cochrane Library) were searched using terms for "hip fracture" and the intervention "early surgery". Results were filtered to only included randomised controlled trials in the English language published from the year 2000.Study SelectionAll results were imported into Covidence and screened by two separate reviewers with conflicts resolved by a third reviewer. Studies were included if they reported data on the relationship between time to theatre and at least one of the outcome measures (mortality, peri-operative complications, and length of stay in hospital). Three papers were finalised to include in this review.Data ExtractionOnce selected, each paper had a bias assessment completed by two separate reviewers using the Cochrane RoB2 tool. Any conflicts were resolved by a third reviewer.Data SynthesisData from each paper were inputted into RevMan5 for analysis. Approximated sample mean and standard deviation were collected from each paper and included for analysis. RevMan5 was then used to generate forest plots and report data on relative risk and mean difference.ConclusionsThis review has shown that accelerated care of patients with hip fractures was associated with lower risks of delirium and infection, and a shorter length of hospital stay. However, the effect of time to surgery on patient mortality is not clear, as the standard care group had a lower mortality than expected for the population at risk and had surgery on average within 24-h of presentation.