Study: Patients with femoral fragility fractures may lose substantial muscle mass
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Key takeaways:
- Patients with femoral fragility fractures lost an average of 2.4 kg or 9% of their skeletal muscle mass at 6 weeks after fixation surgery.
- Researchers noted early muscle loss did not recover by 6 months.
According to results published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, patients who underwent surgery for a femoral fragility fracture lost an average of 2.4 kg or 9% of skeletal muscle mass at 6 weeks after injury.
Researchers performed a multicenter, prospective observational study of 99 patients (mean age of 77.6 years) who were treated with operative fixation for an isolated femoral fragility fracture between March 1, 2021, and Jan. 1, 2023.
According to the study, researchers used multifrequency bioelectrical impedance analysis to assess skeletal muscle mass within 72 hours of admission and at 6 weeks, 3 months and 6 months after injury. At the time of injury, 30 patients (33%) were sarcopenic and 44 patients (49%) were malnourished or at risk for malnutrition.
At 6 weeks after injury, researchers found patients had lost an average of 2.4 kg (9%) of skeletal muscle mass. They noted this early muscle loss did not recover by 6 months. Researchers also noted patients with normal nutritional status lost more skeletal muscle mass at 6 weeks compared with patients who were malnourished. They found every 1-kg decrease in skeletal muscle mass was associated with an 8-point decrease in patient-reported physical function scores.
“These findings support the notion that the preservation of skeletal muscle mass after injury is important to maintaining physical function and highlight the need for interventions to reverse this pathologic process for all older adults, not just the most debilitated or malnourished,” the researchers wrote in the study.
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