affect of anesthesia?

I am so sorry you have lost your wife. Broken hips are a leading cause of death in the elderly and especially so the ones with dementia.

Four years ago my DH fell and broke the same area as your wife. He came home after weeks, but was confused even more than before the fracture. When I took him to see his neurologist who was told of the surgery, the doctor stopped and specifically asked how the surgery had affected him.

  I told him that my DH was more confused and had taken a long time to recover. The neurologist told us that any type of anesthesia will set a patient with dementia back a very long time. That was indeed our own personal experience.

Three d,

What I have heard is that anesthesia doesn't often cause dementia, but for those who are vulnerable to it, it speeds up the process.

My late wife Brenda was operated on for cancer in 2007, and when she came home from the hospital, it was like flipping a light switch: the obvious symptoms started.  Asking the same questions over and over, etc.  It seemed to me at the time it caused the dementia.  But...

In retrospect, I see that she had exhibited the more subtle symptoms as early as 2004 at age 59.  The stage 2 symptoms of being unaware of her surroundings caused her to total two vehicles in 10 mph accidents when she had never even had a ticket in her life, much less an accident.

From 2007, it was a long downhill battle all the way through the last part of stage 7.  She passed away in January, 2020.  I still feel the anesthesia sped things up, but didn't cause the dementia (she had 6 close family members with Alzheimers, so there was a strong genetic factor).  But there was no doubt either the anesthesia or the trauma of the operation had a significant effect.

extex,

You might try another hospice.  My wife was still very mobile at the start of stage 7 and she was accepted with no problems.  Hospice is a godsend, so I would try again.

Mike

When I was in medical school, we were warned that the fatality rate for hip fracture was twenty-five percent.  This is for all patients, with or without dementia.  Most older adults are already medically compromised in some way, and hip fractures result in many complications.  By hip fracture I include femur fracture.

Iris

My mother had dementia and when she broke her hip the surgeon wanted to do a complete replacement. He had not met her only seen the x-rays. I explained her condition and that she would not be able to do that much therapy he said he could just put screws in to stabilize it. She never recovered and was dead in less than a week. My Wife has Alzheimers and fell and broke her humerus. The bone was not perfectly aligned so we talked about surgery. I was skeptical of anesthesia so I elected to let it heal without surgery. Her arm may never be as strong as it would have been with surgery but she had previously had a stroke that affected that side so her arm already couldn't do much. It is so hard to know which way is best and by time you know it is to late to do anything about it. All we can do is what we think is best with the information we have at the time.