The
Deadliest
Break
Health Report
Hip fractures kill tens of
thousands every year.
Here’s how to survive one
BY TOM SLEAR
E
IGHT YEARS AFTER ISABELLE JACKSON
fell and broke her hip, she retains two
vivid memories of the aftermath. The
first is the pain, which was excruciating. The retired schoolteacher from Hannibal, Missouri, now 91, had never suffered a broken bone before, and she prided herself on a lifetime of good health.
She also remembers thinking about her sister, who had fractured her hip and
spent the remaining six years of her life in a wheelchair. “I was determined not
to be like my sister,” says Jackson, who today walks with no assistance and with-
out a limp. “That was not going to happen to me.”
The statistics put Jackson in a select minority: those who not only survive a
hip fracture but thrive after one. Of the 300,000 Americans 65 or older who frac-
ture a hip each year, 20 to 30 percent will die within 12 months, and “many more
will experience significant functional loss,” according to a 2009 study published
in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
The statistics are indeed sobering: A year after fracturing a hip, 90 percent
of those who needed no assistance
climbing stairs before the fracture
will not be able to climb five stairs;
66 percent won’t be able to get on or
off a toilet without help; 50 percent
won’t be able to raise themselves from
a chair; 31 percent won’t be able to get
out of bed unassisted; and 20 percent
won’t be able to put on a pair of pants
by themselves.
