Descrição
Background: Hip fractures are considered to be the most devastating consequence of osteoporosis. They require long hospitalizations and high health-care costs and represent an important cause of morbidity, disability, and mortality, especially in the elderly. As patients are invariably hospitalized in most countries the epidemiology of hip fracture is well documented compared with other fracture outcomes and provides a surrogate for the total burden of osteoporosis.
Objectives: To carry out an epidemiologic analyses of hip fractures incidence rates in Portugal.
Methods: All cases of hip fracture occurred at 40 years of age or above from 2006 to 2010 were extracted from the Portuguese National Hospital Discharge Register. Age and gender-stratified population data was collected from the Institute for National Statistics. Average annual incidences were computed for age and gender groups along with the associated mortality, length of hospital stay and destination of the patient after discharge. Statistical differences between genders were assessed trough IBM SPSS® 20 with 0.05 as level of significance.
Results: A total of 51701 hip fractures occurred in the period under analysis. Hip fracture incidence rates were higher in women than in men and increased with age. The lowest incidence was observed in the 40-44 age group (14.1 and 4.0 per 100,000 inhabitants for men and women, respectively). The highest rate was observed among the 95-100 age-group (2,577.6 and3,551.8/100,000 inhabitants, for men and women, respectively).
The mean length of hospital stay was13.4 days for men and 14.2 days for women (t=6.731; p<0.05), respectively.
We also found statistically significant differences between genders on patient’s destination after discharge (Chi Square=253.099; p<0.05), the most frequent being: home 88.5% (men=85.3%; women=89.6%), mortality 5.1% (men=7.9%; women=4.3%), transferred for another hospital 3.9% (men=4.9%; women=3.7%), with homecare help 1.9% (men=1.2%; women=1.9%), discharge without medical consent 0.6%( men=0.7%; women=0.5%).
Conclusions: As expected women have a higher incidence of hip fractures. The Portuguese women are more likely to go home after being discharge of the hospital and have a lower mortality. Men are more likely to be transferred for another hospital. Further studies are necessary for access the mortality rates after discharge.
References: Kanis, J.A. & Johnell, O. (2005). Requirements for DXA for the management of osteoporosis in Europe. Osteoporos Int., 16:229–38.
Cooper, C., Cole, Z.A., Holroyd, C.R., Earl, S.C., Harvey, N.C., Dennison, E.M., Melton, L.J., Cummings, S.R., & Kanis, J.A. (2011). Secular trends in the incidence of hip and other osteoporotic fractures. Osteoporos Int., 22:1277–88.
; Ferreira, Ricardo Jorge de Oliveira 
