The Impact of Blood Transfusion in Developing Postoperative Delirium in Patients with Hip Fracture Surgery

Background: Many studies have been conducted to explore the risk factors associated with postoperative delirium (POD) in order to understand its underlying causes and develop prevention strategies, especially for hip fracture surgery. However, the relationship between blood transfusion and POD has been heatedly debated. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the risk factors of POD and the relationship between blood transfusions and the occurrence of POD in hip fracture surgery through big data analysis. Methods: Medical data (including medication history, clinical and laboratory findings, and perioperative variables) were acquired from the clinical data warehouse (CDW) of the five hospitals of Hallym University Medical Center and were compared between patients without POD and with POD. Results: The occurrence of POD was 18.7% (228 of 2398 patients). The risk factors of POD included old age (OR 4.38, 95% CI 2.77–6.91; p < 0.001), American Society of Anesthesiology physical status > 2 (OR 1.84 95% CI 1.4–2.42; p < 0.001), dementia (OR 1.99, 95% CI 1.53–2.6; p < 0.001), steroid (OR 0.53 95% CI 0.34–0.82; p < 0.001), Antihistamine (OR 1.53 95% CI 1.19–1.96; p < 0.001), and postoperative erythrocyte sedimentation rate (mm/h) (OR 0.97 95% CI 0.97–0.98; p < 0.001) in multivariate logistic regression analysis. The postoperative transfusion (OR 2.53, 95% CI 1.88–3.41; p < 0.001) had a significant effect on the incidence of POD. Conclusions: big data analytics using a CDW was a good option to identify the risk factors of POD and to prevent POD in hip fracture surgery.