Materials and methods
We undertook a retrospective audit of hip fracture patients admitted to our district general hospital between June 08 and June 09. There were 349 (N) hip fracture patients admitted during that period. We obtained the details of all echocardiograms performed by the cardiology department for our hip fracture patients. There were 29 patients (echo group), who had an echocardiogram as part of their pre-operative work-up. A computer generated randomised sample of 40 patients was generated from the remaining 320 patients, 'non-echo' group. Demographic and clinical data was obtained from medical records and the Hospital Information Support System (HISS). We looked at delay to surgery, length of stay and mortality rates between the 'echo' and 'non echo' groups. The groups were compared using Student's t test. Approval was obtained locally from the Sunderland Royal Hospital clinical governance department for this project