Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
Thank you for your insightful remarks on our recent publication regarding the barriers and facilitators of weight bearing after hip fracture surgery among older adults.
We agree with your emphasis on the modifiable factors related to surgical and non-surgical processes, and structural barriers. These modifiable factors lend themselves to quality improvement, and ultimately improved health outcomes. We also agree that it is well established that earlier time to surgery is associated with better health outcomes and is an indicator of quality of care. This is supported by your multicentre study. For our review, few studies evaluated whether earlier time to surgery was a facilitator of full weight bearing postoperatively, our outcome of interest (n = 3 with inconsistent evidence for an association). It may be hypothesised that earlier surgery is associated with full weight bearing orders, given both are considered best practice (for the vast majority of patients with hip fracture). However, we found limited empirical evidence to confirm/refute this hypothesis in our review. The association between early surgery and whether full weight bearing orders are in fact realised by the patient is perhaps a little more complex (as many additional factors come into play such as pain, fear, staffing etc.).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
Katie Sheehan receives funding from UK Research & Innovation, the National Institutes of Health Research (NIHR) and Chartered Society of Physiotherapy Charitable Trust for hip fracture health services research not related to the current manuscript. KS is the Chair of the Scientific and Publications Committee of the Falls and Fragility Fracture Audit Programme which manages the National Hip Fracture Database audit at the Royal College of Physicians. Ruqayyah Turabi declares that she has no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Turabi, R.Y., Sheehan, K.J. Response letter to: “The importance of structural barriers of osteoporotic hip fracture in the elderly”. Osteoporos Int 34, 1819 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00198-023-06864-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00198-023-06864-x