Except in rare instances when younger persons receive severe and unusual trauma such as would occur in automobile accidents and the like, persons who sustain a fracture of the hip are adults in the older age group. The general medical management of these patients therefore resolves itself largely into a problem of geriatrics. To determine the incidence and the nature of the more common medical problems and complications encountered analysis has been made of all cases of fracture of the hip treated in the Hospital for Special Surgery during ten years ending December 1946.
Seventy-two per cent of the patients were women (table 1); the largest incidence occurred between 70 and 80 years. The average age of the women was 66 years, ten years older than the average age of the men and three years older than the general average. The differences in age between sexes is clearly shown in