Institutionalization after hip fracture occurs in at least 30% of patients in the year following hospital discharge. We demonstrate that the risk of transfer to a long-term care facility, after adjustment for age and burden of co-morbidity, is also increased following fractures at other osteoporotic sites in men and women. For most fractures, men are at greater risk than women.
Introduction: High institutionalization rates have been documented following non-traumatic hip fractures; however, there is lack of knowledge regarding the frequency of transfer to long-term care institutions of patients who sustain such fractures at other anatomical sites.
Methods: Using the comprehensive health care databases of the province of Manitoba, Canada, we performed a retrospective matched cohort study of community-dwelling men and women aged 50 years and older who sustained an incident non-traumatic fracture between April 1, 1986, and March 31, 2006. Using Cox proportional hazards regression analysis, we estimated the sex-specific relative risk of transfers to long-term care institutions in the year following fracture at osteoporotic sites.
Results: We identified a total of 70,264 individuals with incident fractures (70.0% in women) among whom 3,996 new admissions to long-term care institutions were documented in the year following the index fracture. New admissions increased over time (p < 0.0001 for temporal trends). The age- and co-morbidity-adjusted hazard ratio (HR) of institutionalization following a hip fracture was 4.89 (95% confidence interval [CI], 4.19 to 5.69) in men, and this risk was consistently at least twice that of controls for all other fracture sites (all p < 0.0001). In women, the relative risks were highest subsequent to a hip (HR, 2.79; 95% CI, 2.56 to 3.04) or vertebral fracture (HR, 2.18; 95% CI, 1.82 to 2.62).
Conclusions: Non-traumatic fractures at any site have serious consequences, including institutionalization. Men are at greater risk of transfer to long-term care following fracture than women.