Retrospective analysis of 77,966 Australian proximal humeral fracture hospitalizations from 2008 to 2017, using two national databases to track how the incidence of these fractures changed and how treatment patterns — nonoperative management, ORIF, hemiarthroplasty, and RTSA — shifted over the decade.
When planning surgery for a proximal humeral fracture in a patient ≥65 years, the national data confirm RTSA has supplanted hemiarthroplasty as the arthroplasty of choice — and that nonoperative management is increasingly the first-line approach regardless of age; be prepared to justify operative intervention against a backdrop of mounting evidence for equivalent nonoperative outcomes.
Retrospective analysis of 77,966 Australian proximal humeral fracture hospitalizations from 2008 to 2017, using two national databases to track how the incidence of these fractures changed and how treatment patterns — nonoperative management, ORIF, hemiarthroplasty, and RTSA — shifted over the decade.
When planning surgery for a proximal humeral fracture in a patient ≥65 years, the national data confirm RTSA has supplanted hemiarthroplasty as the arthroplasty of choice — and that nonoperative management is increasingly the first-line approach regardless of age; be prepared to justify operative intervention against a backdrop of mounting evidence for equivalent nonoperative outcomes.