The association between anesthesia technique, clinical characteristics, and morbidity in geriatric patients undergoing hip surgery: A retrospective study

The objective of this study was to assess the association between the anesthesia technique and patient characteristics, morbidity, and mortality in geriatric patients undergoing hip surgery. After the study protocol was approved by the ethics committee, medical records of a total of 700 patients over 65 years of age who underwent hip surgery between 2009 and 2013 in Fırat University Hospital were examined. Among these, 114 patients with a full medical dataset were included in the study. A total of 486 patient files were excluding due to inadequate data or incorrect coding. Patients were assigned into two following groups: general anesthesia group and regional anesthesia group, which included 76 and 38 patients, respectively. The groups were compared with respect to age, gender, amount of volume replacement performed, need for blood transfusion, need for postoperative intensive care, duration of hospital stay, complications, hemodynamic changes, the type of surgery, concomitant conditions, ASA, duration of anesthesia, and duration of surgery. The two groups did not differ significantly with respect to age, ASA, gender, duration of anesthesia, hemoglobin at admission and discharge, complications, need for postoperative intensive care, volume replacement, mortality, and the need for blood and blood product transfusions. However, the duration of surgery (113.68 ± 34.732 dak) and the length of hospital stay (11.4211± 4.03117 days) were significantly shorter among regional anesthesia patients. In conclusion, regional anesthesia appears to be superior to general anesthesia in geriatric patients undergoing hip surgery due to significantly shorter duration of surgery and hospital stay, and lesser need for blood transfusion, although the difference for the latter did not reach statistical significance. Keywords: regional anesthesia, general anesthesia, duration of surgery, length of hospital stay.