News Release

Women over 75 would rather be dead than be in a home with a hip fracture

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Center for Advancing Health

Eighty per cent of women over the age of 75 years of age say that they would rather be dead than admitted to a nursing home after a hip fracture, according to researchers from Australia in this week's British Medical Journal.

During interviews with 194 women aged over 75 years, Mr Glenn Salkeld and colleagues from the University of Sydney and Hornsby Ku-ring-gai Hospital in New South Wales, found that hip fractures are perceived as a profound threat to quality of life. Any loss of ability to live independently in the community has significant detrimental effect on their quality of life, say the authors, and four-fifths would prefer to be dead than admitted to a nursing home with a hip fracture. Compared with other (time trade-off) studies the results suggest that women would perceive a hip fracture as worse than breast cancer, a heart attack or mild osteoarthritis, say the authors.

Hip fractures are a major cause of morbidity and mortality and almost all occur after a fall, explain Salkeld et al. Therefore they conclude that any interventions that can reduce the likelihood of falls and injury in older women will not only save lives but will prevent a significant reduction in their quality of life.

(Quality of life related to fear of falling and hip fracture in older women: A time trade off study, British Medical Journal, Volume 320, 5 February 2000.)

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For further information about the British Medical Journal or to obtain a full-text version of the study, please contact Jill Shepherd on 44-0-171-383 6529, Public Affairs Division, British Medical Association, BMA House, Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9JP or email: jshepherd@bmj.com or pressoffice@bma.org.uk. After 6 p.m. and on weekends telephone: +44(0)181 241 6386/+44(0)181 997 3653/+44(0)181 674 6294/+44(0)1525 379792/+44(0)181 651 5130.

Posted by the Center for the Advancement of Health (http://www.cfah.org). For information about the Center, call Petrina Chong, (pchong@cfah.org) (202) 387-2829.


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