The implantation of a pacemaker and then, a few months later, the femoral surgery. Both with excellent results. Nothing exceptional, except that the patient, Mrs. Aide, was born in 1918. And at 106 years old she is doing very well and continues her physiotherapy course which, slowly, is helping her to recover. It happens at the Santissima Annunziata hospital in Cento, Ferrara.
Aide Borgatti, born in the United States of America, where her father had moved during the First World War – the Ferrara company explains – had undergone a pacemaker implant in April, operated by Biagio Sassone, director of the facility’s Cardiology department. Unfortunately, at the beginning of May she fractured her right femur and returned to the hospital, to be operated on, within a few hours of arriving at the Emergency Room, by the team led by Luca Castagnini. The operation was carried out “without complications and the following day Aide was able to start physiotherapy after a physiatric evaluation”. The doctors say that, “despite her 106 years, the patient is very lucid, positive about life and has calmly told the doctors in the hospital about episodes related to her long life”. Ten days after being admitted, Mrs. Aide was transferred to continue her physiotherapy, first in a long-term care facility, then in a rehabilitation facility, where she is still undergoing re-education to walk. At the check-up, one month after the operation, she was fine.
“Thanks to the early care – Castagnini emphasizes – and above all thanks to Aide’s strength of spirit, this story allows us to highlight the progress made by medicine in patients with femur fractures in old age. It is not common to operate on 106-year-old patients: her functional recovery therefore gives hope to all the elderly who unfortunately fracture their femurs every day”.
Even today, osteoporotic fractures represent one of the main health problems in developed countries.
A 106-year-old patient, Castagnini points out, “is causing some concern not only to her family, but also to the doctors who are treating her. This despite her general condition being good. In the past, before the advent of new surgical methods, femoral fractures in the elderly represented an unfavourable prognostic factor for many patients. This is especially related to the need for prolonged bed rest. Even today, osteoporotic fractures represent one of the main health problems in developed countries and femoral fractures, in particular, are burdened by an acute mortality rate of around 5-8% and a one-year mortality rate of up to 25%”.
It is also estimated that “about 29-50% of elderly subjects with femoral fractures are unable to recover pre-fracture levels of autonomy. To reduce complications that could therefore put the patient’s life at risk, it is particularly important to organize timely surgical treatment with arthroplasty or osteosynthesis, with the aim of mobilizing the patient already on the first post-operative day and allowing the patient to resume walking as soon as possible. In this way, the fearsome complications related to bed rest can be avoided, in particular thrombosis and pulmonary embolisms. This process is made possible by a multidisciplinary team composed of different professional figures: emergency room doctor, orthopedist, anesthetist, orthogeriatrician, physiatrist, physiotherapists and nursing staff”, concludes the doctor.
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