Serum Albumin Predicts Survival and Postoperative Course Following Surgery for Geriatric Hip Fracture :

Data used for evaluating quality of medical care need to be of high reliability to ensure valid quality assessment and benchmarking. The American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) has continually emphasized the collection of highly reliable clinical data through its program infrastructure. We provide a detailed description of the various mechanisms used in ACS NSQIP to assure collection of high quality data, including training of data collectors (surgical clinical reviewers) and ongoing audits of data reliability. For the 2005 through 2008 calendar years, inter-rater reliability was calculated overall and for individual variables using percentages of agreement between the data collector and the auditor. Variables with > 5% disagreement are flagged for educational efforts to improve accurate collection. Cohen's kappa was estimated for selected variables from the 2007 audit year. Inter-rater reliability audits show that overall disagreement rates on variables have fallen from 3.15% in 2005 (the first year of public enrollment in ACS NSQIP) to 1.56% in 2008. In addition, disagreement levels for individual variables have continually improved, with 26 individual variables demonstrating > 5% disagreement in 2005, to only 2 such variables in 2008. Estimated kappa values suggest substantial or almost perfect agreement for most variables. The ACS NSQIP has implemented training and audit procedures for its hospital participants that are highly effective in collecting robust data. Audit results show that data have been reliable since the program's inception and that reliability has improved every year. Copyright (c) 2010 American College of Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

In a cohort of 169,145 patients with a hip fracture and 524,010 controls we observed an excess mortality among patients compared to controls for as long as 20 years after the hip fracture. The main reason for the excess mortality was linked to the trauma that caused the hip fracture. Patients with a hip fracture have a significant excess mortality. However, it remains unclear if the mortality is linked to the pre-morbid conditions or to complications to the fracture. All subjects with a hip fracture in Denmark between 1977 and 2001 were compared with three age- and gender-matched subjects from the general population. A total of 169,145 fracture cases were compared to 524,010 controls. The cases had a much higher prevalence of co-morbidity than the controls. The mortality rate was twice as high in fracture cases compared with controls (HR = 2.26, 95% CI: 2.24-2.27). Adjustments for confounders only changed the excess mortality risk little. The mortality after the hip fracture was divided into two categories: an excess mortality of 19% within the first year following the fracture (relative survival = 0.81 compared to controls), and an excess mortality of 1.8% per year (relative survival 0.982) for every additional year following the fracture. The major causes of the excess mortality were due to complications to the fracture event (70.8% within the first 30 days). Patients with a hip fracture have a pronounced excess mortality risk. The major cause was linked to the fracture event and not to pre-existing co-morbidity.