Associations between presence of diabetes, mortality and fracture type in individuals with a hip fracture

Bart Spaetgens*, Steffie H A Brouns, Aimée E M J H Linkens, Martijn Poeze, René H M Ten Broeke, Renée A G Brüggemann, Walther Sipers, Ronald M A Henry, Nordin M J Hanssen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

AIMS: An overlooked aspect of diabetes is an increased risk of hip fractures, with associated mortality. We investigated whether fracture type and/or burden of comorbidities explains the increased risk of mortality in diabetes after hip fracture.

METHODS: For this cohort study, we used a de-identified data set of hip fracture patients registered in a quality-of-care registry (2017/2018) included in Maastricht University Medical Centre.

RESULTS: Among 594 hip fracture patients, 90 (15.2 %) had diabetes. Median (IQR) age was 82 (71-87) years and 63.8 % were women. Compared to patients without, patients with diabetes had higher median Charlson Comorbidity Index [1 (0-2) vs 0 (0-2), P < 0.001)] and were more likely to sustain intertrochanteric/subtrochanteric fractures [54.4 vs 38.7 %, P = 0.02]. Over a median follow-up of 2.7 (1.6-3.3) years, crude mortality rate was 30.8 % in patients without and 50.0 % in patients with diabetes. This association remained unaltered after adjustment for age, sex, BMI, fracture type or burden of co-morbidities.

CONCLUSION: Individuals with diabetes display a greatly increased absolute mortality risk after hip fracture. This association was not attenuated after adjustment for fracture type or non-diabetes associated co-morbidity. These findings have important implications for diabetes care in hip fracture patients, and underline the importance of fracture prevention.

Original languageEnglish
Article number110084
Number of pages5
JournalDiabetes Research and Clinical Practice
Volume192
Early online date17 Sept 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2022

Cite this