Development of Clinical Prediction Rules for One-Year Postoperative Functional Outcome in Patients with Intertrochanteric Fractures: The Intertrochanteric Fracture Ambulatory Prediction (IT-AP) Tool

Individualized prediction of postoperative ambulatory status for patients with intertrochanteric fractures is clinically relevant, during both preoperative and intraoperative periods. This study intended to develop clinical prediction rules (CPR) to predict one-year postoperative functional outcomes in patients with intertrochanteric fractures. CPR development was based on a secondary analysis of a retrospective cohort of patients with intertrochanteric fractures aged ≥50 years who underwent a surgical fixation. Good ambulatory status was defined as a New Mobility Score ≥ 5. Two CPR for preoperative and intraoperative predictions were derived using clinical profiles and surgical-related parameters using logistic regression with the multivariable fractional polynomial procedure. In this study, 221 patients with intertrochanteric fractures were included. Of these, 160 (72.4%) had good functional status at one year. The preoperative model showed an acceptable AuROC of 0.77 (95% CI 0.70 to 0.85). After surgical-related parameters were incorporated into the preoperative model, the model discriminative ability was significantly improved to an AuROC of 0.83 (95% CI 0.77 to 0.88) (p = 0.021). The newly-derived CPR enable physicians to provide patients with intertrochanteric fractures with their individualized predictions of functional outcome one year after surgery, which could be used for risk communication, surgical optimization and tailoring postoperative care that fits patients’ expectations.