Providing perioperative care for patients with hip fractures

Abstract

Providing perioperative care for patients with hip fractures can present major challenges for the anaesthesiologist. These patients often have multiple comorbidities, the deterioration of any one of which may have precipitated the fall. A careful balance has to be achieved between minimising the time before operation and spending time to optimise their medical status. This review will present insights into preoperative patient assessment and optimization in this group of patients from the anaesthesiologists' perspective. In particular, it will highlight important medical issues of concern that may alter anaesthetic risks and management. With a greater understanding of what these issues are, potentially a more prompt and integrated approach to managing these patients may be made. Hopefully, this would result in minimising last minute cancellations due to medical reasons for these patients. © 2010 The Author(s).