Li CY, et al. - Researchers evaluated how various types of spinal surgeries and hip fractures are related in the elderly by using a nationwide database, presuming that spinal surgeries may increase hip fracture risk in the elderly. Due to the highly increased hip fracture risk, fall prevention for the elderly undergoing lumbar spinal surgery was seen to be important. The National Health Insurance Research Database was used to identify 3,345 patients undergoing spinal surgery and a random dataset was used to identify 6690 age-, sex- and Charlson comorbidity index-matched controls. A significantly higher risk of hip fracture was seen in patients with long-segment thoracolumbar spinal fusions vs those with only discectomies. The risk of hip fracture also increased slightly with the short segmental lumbar spine fusions compared with discectomies.