After a Fall

The hospital and the community are so intimately related that a change in the one will eventually be reflected by a change in an aspect of the other. Although it may appear that to an orthopaedic surgeon a fall is of no apparent consequence unless it breaks a bone, the group most likely to fall and to break a bone from a fall is nevertheless expanding more rapidly in numbers than any other section of the population1. This means that each year there will be more patients with orthopaedic injuries including fractures of the proximal femur. There has in addition been a rapid growth of orthopaedic waiting lists for elective operations. The dilemma that falls have in part created for the surgeon then is the balance of emergency work against elective surgery and the reduction of the waiting time for elective orthopaedic operations2.