Femur fractures in elderly in Brazil from 2015 to 2020: analysis of costs, time of hospitalization and total deaths

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Femur fractures in the elderly cause increased functional demand in those individuals and it is responsible for a high number of hospital admissions. OBJECTIVE: To retrospectively analyze the total number of cases, costs, hospitalization length and total deaths from femoral fractures in elderly from different regions of Brazil between 2015 and 2020. METHODS: Ecological study of temporal and retrospective series that evaluated femur fracture data in elderly individuals, based on data available on the websites of the Brazilian Ministry of Health. The following variables were evaluated: total cases, Average Hospital Stay (AHS), number of deaths, mortality rate, total hospitalization costs, and per day of hospitalization, Average Fracture Cost (AFC) and Length of Hospitalization for Fracture (LHF) in each region. RESULTS: A total of 328,008 elderly people suffered femur fracture during the studied period. Brazil’s southeast region leads in number of cases, deaths and LHF, the second-place alternates between the south region (2015, 2016 and 2020) and northeast region (2017 and 2019) regions. According to the AHS, the north and northeast regions appear in first and second place, respectively, in all evaluated years, and are above the national average in all studied years. CONCLUSIONS: There is a discrepancy for cases of femoral fractures in elderly individuals among Brazilian regions, whether in the number of cases, costs and total deaths. The higher population density in regions such as the south and southeastern regions contributes to the higher rates of femur fractures in elderly, given that they are also the majority of population in these regions compared to the others.