The increasing number of hip fractures worldwide predicts greater impact to health status in elderly population. In the United States, it has been estimated that the total number of hip fractures might double by the year 2040 compared to the 1980s [2]. Greater contributions should be made by Asian countries for the increasing number of osteoporotic hip fractures in future decades [10]. The risk of mortality and morbidity within one year of fracture remains high according to the existing literatures [4, 11~14].
The improvements in surgical and rehabilitation managements these years have improved clinical outcomes of hip fractures, while complications following hip fracture surgery remain frequent and troubling and are often complex, which might be caused by various factors, such as general conditions, comorbidities, traumatic impairment, surgery, anesthesia, and immobilization, etc. Several studies have focused on the fatal adverse events during the postoperative periods, such as acute myocardial infarction, stroke, deep vein thrombosis, etc. [16 ~ 20], which were known as the most dangerous events.
Pneumonia is also known to be a devastating complication after hip fracture surgery, which can also be life-threatening when correlative respiratory and circulatory failure was induced subsequently, and is especially risky to elderly patients who are more easily affected by the impactions of trauma and immobilization after fractures and surgeries. The reported incidence of pneumonia in elderly patients with a hip fracture was 1.2% preoperatively [22] and approximately 4% ~ 5% postoperatively according to recent literatures [14, 15, 21]. Although the overall incidence was not alarmingly great, it was found that patients who developed pneumonia would have a higher readmission rate, a higher rate of sepsis, and a higher mortality rate [15]. In our study, 70 (5.4%) of 1285 patients developed postoperative pneumonia, which involved the time from 24 hours after surgery to discharge. The latest guidelines built by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Thoracic Society in 2016 [23] has differed Ventilator Associated Pneumonia (VAP) from the traditional concept of Hospital Associated Pneumonia (HAP). However, in developing countries, such as China, situation remains different. Community mechanical ventilator equipment is far from popularized yet, so ventilators still could only be seen in the intensive care unit in hospital in most cases. The development of POP will significantly increase the length of stay, while clinical data would be hard to collect after discharge. Therefore, in this study, we defined POP as a new-onset pneumonia from 24 hours after surgery to discharge, so that all the clinical and radiological evidences could be exactly obtained.
Little was known regarding the occurrence of pneumonia in postoperative periods. In a recent retrospective study of 29, 377 patients, male sex, older age, low body-mass index (BMI), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) were identified to be the strongest risk factors for pneumonia [15]. Our study has also shown that COPD, ASA classification, number of comorbidities, cognitive impairment and preoperative dependent functional status were identified to be the independent risk factors for the development of POP. We considered that the smaller sample and ethnological difference might play a role in the discrepancy of the results.
The impacts of pneumonia on clinical outcomes and rehabilitations in elderly patients with a hip fracture has been demonstrated, and it has been suggested that prevention of pneumonia is necessary to improve the outcome of hip fracture [15]. In a recent research,a nonrandomized, Quasi-experimental study was designed to evaluate an inpatient pulmonary rehabilitation program by comparing 2 sequential time periods in a same center [24], and a pulmonary rehabilitation program was demonstrated to be effective to reduce the incidence of pneumonia. For elderly patients, prevention for complications is more important than that for cure. Thus, an effective prediction strategy is urgently needed clinically. However, previous researches have many limitations regarding the prediction strategies for POP, and prospective studies were rarely found in current literature.
The main advantages of this study include: first, a nomogram was built for the prediction for the development of POP, with good accuracy according to the statistical verifications. As a graphical presentation of predictive model, nomogram has been widely used in the area of oncology [25–28], with great advantages such as easy operation, convenience and effectiveness. Previously, we have reported the predictive nomogram for the development of postoperative delirium in elderly patients with a hip fracture [29]. The nomogram created in this study is supposed to be used clinically as a prediction method in the preoperative assessment, thus further studies with prospective designs can be conducted based on the existing preliminary results. Second, we evaluated the clinical applicability of the nomogram through the method of decision curve analysis combining with the questionnaire of clinical practitioners. The decision curve showed that the nomogram was applicable when thresholds were in the range of 0.05 to 0.65 due to the net benefit compared with the null model for its added value, while the results of questionnaire showed 91.5% of the clinicians had a threshold of intervention when predictive risk of POP ranged from 5% to 50%, which slickly conformed to the net-benefit threshold interval produced by the decision curve. It gives the presentation of the clinical utility of a predictive model more intuitively, making up for the deficiency of the traditional receiver operator characteristic curve.
The main limitations of this study include the following: firstly, it was a retrospective study, so the level of evidence was limited; secondly, it was programmed in a single institution, thus the sample size was small when compared to multi-center studies, and the selection of medical institution by patients might cause potential bias. Then, as the definition of the primary end point of this study—POP, the observation period of this study was limited to the duration of hospitalization, so the follow-up time was short.