Necessity of routine follow-up in patients with a femoral neck fracture treated with hemiarthroplasty.

Femoral neck fractures are common fractures and induce high health care costs [1]. Routine follow-up at the outpatient clinic in the first months postoperatively is the standard of care. Due to the high age and limited mobility of this fragile population, hospital visits are often a burden for these patients. The purpose of these outpatient visits is early detection of the occurrence of complications as infection or dislocation. It is unclear whether patients present these complications on planned or unplanned visits. Routine follow-up visits after hemiarthroplasty for a femoral neck fracture are a burden to patients and health care system. However, the clinical significance of the routine planned visits is unknown. The aim of this retrospective study is to analyze the necessity of routine follow-up after hemiarthroplasty.

We expect that planned visits at the outpatient clinic are unnecessary due to low percentage of treatment changes. Furthermore, we expect that treatment changes will appear at unplanned visits.

01/08/20 start data collection
01/09/20 analyzing data
01/10/20 writing manuscript
01/12/20 submission manuscript