The use of minimum common data set in the development of the Greek Fragility Hip Fracture Registry in the Greek health care setting: the first year of its pilot implementation

Summary

The first Fragility Hip Fracture Registry has been established in Greece. The in-hospital length of stay was 10.8 days and was significantly influenced by the delayed surgical fixation. The increased age, the higher ASA grade, and the male gender influenced negatively the 30-day mortality, which reached 7.5%.

Background

The increased incidence of fragility hip fractures constitutes a great challenge to the health care professionals and causes a significant burden on national health care systems around the globe. Fragility hip fracture registries have been used in many countries in order to document the cotemporary situation in each country and to identify potential weaknesses of the local health care systems.

Aim

The aim of the herein study is to present the results of the pilot implementation of the first fragility hip fracture registry in Greece, which was developed by the Greek Chapter of Fragility Fracture Network (FFN Gr), and use the neural networks in the analysis of the results.

Materials and methods

Seven orthopaedic departments from six different hospitals in Greece participated in the present pilot study. All fragility hip fractures from September 2022 until December 2023 were prospectively collected and documented using a central database. For this purpose, the 22 points of minimum common data set, proposed by the Global Fragility Fracture Network, with the addition of the 30-day mortality was used.

Results

A total of 1009 patients who sustained a fragility hip fracture were included in the study. The mean age of the cohort was 82.2 ± 8.6 years with the majority of patients being female (72%). Sixty percent (60%) of the patients had an extracapsular hip fracture, with a mean ASA grade 2.6 ± 0.8. Intramedullary nailing and hip hemiarthroplasty were the surgical treatments of choice in the majority of extra- and intra-capsular hip fractures respectively. The mean hospital length of stay of the patients was 10.8 ± 8.5 days, and the 30-day mortality was 7.5%. The multivariant analysis revealed that the age, the ASA grade and the male gender had a significant contribution to the 30-day mortality. The neural network model had a significant under-the-curve predictive value (0.778), with age being the most important predictive factor. The length of stay was significantly influenced only by the delayed surgical fixation (more than 36 h from admission).

Conclusions

The present pilot study provides evidence that establishing a fragility hip fracture registry in Greece is feasible and demonstrates that the minimum common data set can be used as the base of any new registry. In Greece, patients with a fragility hip fracture stay in the hospital for approximately 11 days and have 7.5% 30-day mortality. Unfortunately, due to the logistics of the public healthcare system, they do not receive surgical fixation in a timely manner, which is a factor that negatively affects their length of in-hospital stay.