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Minerva

Breaking a hip and other stories . . .

BMJ 2015; 351 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h5259 (Published 21 October 2015) Cite this as: BMJ 2015;351:h5259

Hip breakages and mistakes

Falling and breaking a hip can be the start of a cycle of deterioration in older people. A French study (JAMA 2015;314:1159-66, doi:10.1001/jama.2015.10842) confirmed that outcomes of hip fracture surgery are much worse than those of elective hip replacement. Dutch investigators looked at the records of 616 hip fracture patients in 2007 and found that 114 (19%) of the 616 patients in the study had one or more adverse event and that 49 of these were preventable (BMJ Open 2015;5:e006663, doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2014-006663). Most (70%) adverse events were related to surgery.

Is Betamax obsolete?

It’s now 30 years since the ISIS-1 trial ushered in the routine use of atenolol at the time of myocardial infarction and for a year afterwards. Several further trials confirmed the protective effect of other β …

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