[Comparison of mortality by femur fracture versus hip fracture in elderly patients in a period of five years].

BACKGROUND: Fractures in the elderly population are an economic, social and medical challenge. Not much is known about fractures in this population, which makes difficult the selection of an appropriate treatment. Hip fractures (HF) increase the risk of death and morbidity. Patients with midshaft femur fracture (MFF) have less morbidity and risk of death. The objective was to compare HF and MFF's survival.

METHODS: Observational analytic study. The Hospital General de México database was used to gather patients aged 65 to 94 years with HF and MFF from 2010 to 2014. Patients had an heterogeneous follow-up and their cognitive status was not considered; we had a total of 146 patients. Follow-up was made through phone call.

RESULTS: Kaplan-Meier estimate was used to assess survival. We compared survival depending on type of fracture and found no statistically significant difference (p = 0.97). On sub-analysis, we compared type of fracture on male gender (p = 0.21) and female gender (p = 0.316) and found no statistically significant difference on survival. This differs from what has been reported. It was used t test to evaluate survival in months, according to male (39.61 ± 19.1) and female (36.58 ± 23.19) gender; this showed a significant difference in both groups (p = 0.037).

CONCLUSIONS: In the presence of fractures, we must consider gender when estimating survival on patients with hip or midshaft femur fracture.