Geriatric Hip Fractures

Book excerpt: The global burden of geriatric hip fractures is enormous. From both the patient's and physician’s perspective, the injury is complex. A hip fracture often changes a patient’s life and/or the life of the patient’s family permanently. From the physician’s perspective, care of geriatric hip fracture patients requires a multidisciplinary team, which is led by the surgeon and which includes internists and other subspecialists within internal medicine, anesthesiologists, nurses, operating room technicians, social workers, physical therapists, and rehabilitation center coordinators and staff. Nowhere in the orthopedic literature is there a text that guides care for these complex patients from injury through recovery. This text is the first to do so by organizing and synthesizing a large body of literature. Its main themes include pre-operative, operative, and post-operative care of the patient who sustains a geriatric hip fracture. Its main objective is to organize the current body of literature into a cohesive whole so that the busy orthopedic surgeon does not have to undertake a literature search each time he or she wants an answer to the myriad questions that characterize a patient’s injury, treatment, and recovery course. With regard to pedagogy, because orthopedic surgeons in training will utilize this book, and because the case study is the central pedagogical tool in the field of orthopedic surgery, this book includes case studies within each chapter, with the author’s preferred treatment and decision-making rationale for each case. Selected video supplements reinforce real-world application of knowledge. Practicing orthopedic surgeons, as well as orthopedic residents and fellows in training, will find Geriatric Hip Fractures: A Practical Approach a highly useful and informative resource.