British journal of anaesthesia
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Patients with hip fractures are usually frail and elderly with a 30-day mortality in excess of 10% in European series. Perioperative morbidity is often multifactorial in nature, and unimodal interventions will not necessarily decrease mortality. The purpose of this prospective study was to analyse causes of mortality, and thereby the potential and limitations to decrease mortality after hip fracture surgery. ⋯ About a quarter of the total mortality in hip fracture patients is definitely unavoidable, and death is probably only avoidable in about half of the unselected patients. These results have important implications for the design of future outcome studies, which should focus on other relevant outcomes than mortality per se.