Weight-bearing restrictions reduce postoperative mobility in elderly hip fracture patients

Background and purpose Reduced mobility is a severe threat to the clinical outcomes and survival of elderly hip fracture patients. These patients generally struggle to comply with partial weight bearing, yet postoperative weight-bearing restrictions are still recommended by nearly 25% of surgeons. Therefore, we hypothesized that weight-bearing restrictions in elderly hip fracture patients merely leads to reduced mobility, while transposing full weight to the fractured extremity remains unaffected disregarding the prescribed aftercare.