The recent Global Fragility Fracture Network (FFN) Congress in Melbourne Australia hosted Professor Xavier Griffin who is a much-published and internationally respected orthopaedic surgeon researcher who hails from Queen Mary University of London in the United Kingdom. Professor Griffin provided the delegates with some key outcomes of the recent Cochrane Special Collection that reviewed the latest evidence of pre-operative and peri-operative care of people presenting with hip fracture. Professor Griffin was able to demonstrate to us through this suite of reviews of over 250 studies with over 50,000 participants that the following are no longer debatable and we should implement them in our practice. 1. Administer nerve blocks in the ED – controlling pain as soon as the patient with hip fracture arrives at hospital greatly reduces them experiencing delirium. 2. Use either spinal or general anaesthesia in these patients as neither is superior in relation to incidence of delirium, mortality rates, ambulation, and other common complications. Just get good at one anaesthetic technique! 3. A cemented prosthesis will yield an improved global outcome … for every 26 people treated with a cemented hemiarthroplasty one more person will be alive at 12 months. 4. Where there is clinical uncertainty regarding the benefit of THR it is likely that any benefit is small and may not be clinically appreciable. 5. There is currently no evidence to suggest that a bipolar hemiarthroplasty will yield different outcomes compared with a unipolar prosthesis. 6. Extramedullary devices yield very similar functional outcomes to nails in the management of extracapsular fractures, including more complex fracture subtypes. 7. Using a nail in preference to an extramedullary device saves one infection per 303 patients but causes one additional implant-related fracture per 67 people.
For more hot off the press clinical evidence for management of people with fragility fractures from presentation for their acute care, to rehabilitation, to secondary prevention; put a place holder in your diary for the next FFN Congress in Oslo from 3rd – 6th October 2023.
Opportunity for article in BMJ Open Quality
The Fragility Fracture Network (FFN) under the leadership of the Hip Fracture Recovery Research Special Interest Group (HFRR) and BMJ Open Quality are pleased to announce that a collaborative supplement on healthcare improvement work in fragility fracture will be published in the early summer 2023: ‘Fragility Fracture Network Innovations in Healthcare Improvement: a special supplement’. For additional information review the journal website for specific submission guidance: https://bmjopenquality.bmj.com/ or send us an email to communications@fragilityfracturenetwork.org
11th Fragility Fracture Network Global Congress 2023
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The FFN has over 9000 global members, representing 102 countries and all continents. Our members are orthopaedic surgeons, geriatricians, physicians, endocrinologists, rheumatologists, emergency medicine doctors, anaesthetists, nurses, physiotherapists, allied health professionals, researchers, scientists and industry partners. Join for free and become a member of a global team of fragility fracture experts and carers. Membership provides access to a collection of evidence based resources that have been developed around the world to support improved care for fragility fracture patients!