Broken Hip May Raise Death Risk

In that a number of previous studies have established that hip fracture increases the risk of death, it has been unclear whether the increased risk persists, and if so, to what magnitude and duration.  to Patrick Haentjens, from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of published studies from 1957 to mid-2009, involving subjects ages 50 years and older, totaling 578,436 women and 154,276 men with hip fracture.  The researchers found that the risk of all-cause mortality increased between five- and eight-fold in the first three months after the fracture, and while the risk dropped substantially during the first two years after the broken hip, for up to 10 years it remained significantly higher than among uninjured people.  Further, they found that at any time, the risk of death was greater for men than for women.