The Ability of the Nottingham Hip Fracture Score to Predict Mobility, Length of Stay and Mortality in Hospital, and Discharge Destination in Patients Admitted with a Hip Fracture

The Nottingham Hip Fracture Score (NHFS) has been developed for predicting 30-day and 1-year mortality after hip fracture. We hypothesise that NHFS may also predict other adverse events. Data from 666 patients (190 men, 476 women), aged 60.2–103.4 years, admitted with a hip fracture to a single centre from 1/10/2015 and 7/12/2017 were analysed. The ability of NHFS to predict mobility within 1 day after surgery, length of stay (LOS) find mortality, and discharge destination was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic curves and two-graph plots. The area under the curve (95% confidence interval [CI]) for predicting mortality was 67.4% (58.4–76.4%), prolonged LOS was 59.0% (54.0–64.0%), discharge to residential/nursing care was 62.3% (54.0–71.5%), and any two of failure to mobilise, prolonged LOS or discharge to residential/nursing care was 64.8% (59.0–70.6%). NHFS thresholds at 4 and 7 corresponding to the lower and upper limits of intermediate range where sensitivity and specificity equal 90% were identified for mortality and prolonged LOS, and 4 and 6 for discharge to residential/nursing care, which were used to create three risk categories. Compared with the low risk group (NHFS = 0–4), the high risk group (NHFS = 7–10 or 6–10) had increased risk of in-patient mortality: rates = 2.0% versus 7.1%, OR (95% CI) = 3.8 (1.5–9.9), failure to mobilise within 1 day of surgery: rates = 18.9% versus 28.3%, OR = 1.7 (1.0–2.8), prolonged LOS (> 17 days): rates = 20.3% versus 33.9%, OR = 2.2 (1.3–3.3), discharge to residential/nursing care: rates = 4.5% vs 12.3%, OR = 3.0 (1.4–6.4), and any two of failure to mobilise, prolonged LOS or discharge to residential/nursing care: rates = 10.5% versus 28.6%, 3.4 (95% CI 1.9–6.0), and stayed 4.1 days (1.5–6.7 days) longer in hospital. High NHFS associates with increased risk of mortality, prolonged LOS and discharge to residential/nursing care, lending further support for its use to identify adverse events.