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For patients who present with hip fracture, current American College of Surgeons guidelines recommend surgery within 48 hours. However, could more rapid intervention improve outcomes? Canadian investigators retrospectively assessed a cohort of >42,000 adults (average age, 80) with acute hip fracture to evaluate outcomes based on time to surgery (by hour) after arrival at the hospital. Average time to surgery was 39 hours, and two thirds of patients underwent surgery >24 hours after presentation.
After adjusting for comorbid conditions and other presurgical risks, investigators determined that time to surgery of longer than 24 hours after hip fracture presentation was associated with excess complications. Early surgical intervention (within 2…