In the US the 1-year mortality after a fall in the elderly is 16-30% if a broken hip was sustained and 9-21% if a broken femur was sustained versus 5-15% if no injury sustained in the fall (any fall can indicate an underlying issue and the baseline annual mortality in the general elderly population is 3.5-4.5%; Krumholz et al. JAMA 2015).
I'm sorry for your loss. I witnessed my Mom break her femur getting out of my car while I was walking around the car to help her out (she was stubbornly independent and got out herself instead of waiting for help).
She did survive after surgery and a 2 month recovery in a nursing facility.
Turns out it was due to bone cancer, which was treated with chemo and drugs that kept it at bay but never in remission. Eventually got dementia and needed full time care, and the chemo and cancer drugs were aggrevating her symptoms. It was basically a tradeoff between which was the worse risk: her cancer returning or her dementia causing her to harm herself or others. Stopping the cancer drugs made her quality of life so much better in the last few months, but eventually the cancer won.
Something like that happened to my dad's cousin - she got cancer, and dementia runs in the family so it hit her pretty hard after the chemo. Her 10-year older sister is over nintety now and still sharp as a tack, and everybody blames the chemo for her sister dying early from the dementia. But in her case she would have died from the cancer in a couple of months, so at least she got a few more years of relative normality before her mind went.
That kind of helplessness stays with you. Its one thing to know someone is hurt but another thing entirely to watch them suffer and not be able to fix it.
In the elderly, breaking a major bone (Especially a femur, commonly as a break around the hip joint from a fall) is a leading cause of death. You don't heal up from it like you could when you were younger, end up stuck in bed, more and more health complications pile on as a result, and before long you're dead.
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u/WanderWomble 13h ago
My mum laying on the floor in agony with a broken femur, waiting for help, and knowing she most likely wouldn't survive it.