Study: Hip fractures double elderly women's chance of dying

Elderly women with hip fractures are more than twice as likely to die in the six months following the incident than those who don't have one, according to a French study published by the American Geriatrics Society.

The French researchers studied 7,512 volunteer ambulatory women aged 75 and older in Amiens, Lyon, Montpellier, Paris, and Toulouse who were recruited from voter registration lists. Women who had a history of hip fracture or bilateral hip replacement were excluded.
 
The researchers tracked the women every 4 months for 4 years to record the occurrence of fractures and deaths.
 
The authors found that women with hip fracture were more than twice as likely to die after a hip fracture than those who didn't have one, and the risk was greater in the first six months.