Within 30 days, the occurrence of acute cholecystitis in elderly patients after hip fracture after the index date was 0.24% and dramatically increases after 30-day mortality rate by 4.35-fold, as elucidated in a Nationwide Cohort Study published in 'Journal of Korean medical science'.

As acute cholecystitis in the elderly hip fracture is not easily identifiable from other gastrointestinal symptoms and entails atypical clinical behaviours, it may not be diagnosed in the early stage. However, the exact incidences could not be described. Jang SY et al. utilised the data from a nationwide claims database and attempted to evaluate the prevalence of acute cholecystitis in elderly hip fracture patients and how cholecystitis affects mortality rates following a hip fracture.
A total of 588,147 participants were randomly selected from a population of approximately 5.5 million enrollees who were above 60 years of age in the year 2002. These subjects were over 65 years old and underwent hip fractures surgery.
There were 15,210 patients enrolled in the cohort as hip fracture patients. All in all, 7,888 cases (51.9%) of femoral neck fracture and 7,443 (48.9%) cases of hemiarthroplasty were there.

It was revealed that 36 patients developed acute cholecystitis within 30 days after the index date. Four out of 36 acute cholecystitis patients died within 30 days versus 2.92% of patients without acute cholecystitis. The hip fracture patients with incident acute cholecystitis were 4.35 times more likely to die within 30 days as compared to those patients without acute cholecystitis.

Early disease detection and management are essential for patients, the study investigators.