Ten years of hip fractures in Italy: For the first time a decreasing trend in elderly women

AIM: To evaluate the hospitalization rate of femoral neck fractures in the elderly Italian population over ten years. METHODS: We analyzed national hospitalizations records collected at central level by the Ministry of Health from 2000 to 2009. Age- and sex-specific rates of fractures occurred at femoral neck in people >= 65 years old. We performed a sub-analysis over a three-year period (2007-2009), presenting data per five-year age groups, in order to evaluate the incidence of the hip fracture in the oldest population. RESULTS: We estimated a total of 839008 hospitalizations due to femoral neck fractures between 2000 and 2009 in people >= 65, with an overall increase of 29.8% over 10 years. The incidence per 10000 inhabitants remarkably increased in people >= 75, passing from 158.5 to 166.8 (+5.2%) and from 72.6 to 77.5 (+6.8%) over the ten-year period in women and men, respectively. The oldest age group (people > 85 years old) accounted for more than 42% of total hospital admissions in 2009 (n = 39000), despite representing only 2.5% of the Italian population. Particularly, women aged > 85 accounted for 30.8% of total fractures, although they represented just 1.8% of the general population. The results of this analysis indicate that the incidence of hip fractures progressively increased from 2000 to 2009, but a reduction can be observed for the first time in women <= 75 (-7.9% between 2004 and 2009). CONCLUSION: Incidence of hip fractures in Italy are continuously increasing, although women aged 65-74 years old started showing a decreasing trend. (C) 2014 Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.