MONDAY, Jan. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Patients with hip fracture have an increased risk of developing a major depressive disorder and the risk is highest in those who are more apathetic at baseline, researchers report in the January issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Eric J. Lenze, M.D., of the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh, and colleagues studied 126 hip fracture patients who were initially free of depression and were treated with surgical fixation.
The researchers found that 18 (14.3 percent) of the patients developed a major depressive disorder, including 11 who showed evidence of the disorder during hospitalization and seven who did so after two to 10 weeks. They also found that 46.2 percent of patients with high baseline scores on the Apathy Evaluation Scale developed a major depressive disorder compared with 10.9 percent of those with lower scores.
"A rate of 14 percent found in the current study suggests that more than 800,000 episodes of major depressive disorder per year occur in older people as a consequence of disabling medical events," the authors write. "The enormity of this problem dictates that further research is needed into potential risk factors (psychosocial and biological) for depression after disabling medical events such as hip fracture to aid the development of effective preventive and treatment strategies for late-life depression."
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