Research Article Prevalence of Hyponatremia in Femur Neck Fractures: A One-Year Survey in an Urban Emergency Department Gianfranco Cervellin, 1 Michele Mitaritonno, 1 Mario Pedrazzoni, 2 Alessandra Picanza, 3 and Giuseppe Lippi 3 1 Emergency Department, Academic Hospital of Parma, Via Gramsci 14, 43126 Parma, Italy 2 Department of Internal Medicine, University of Parma, 43126 Parma, Italy 3 Laboratory of Clinical Chemistry and Hematology, Academic Hospital of Parma, 43126 Parma, Italy Correspondence should be addressed to Gianfranco Cervellin; gcervellin@ao.pr.it Received 18 June 2014; Revised 26 August 2014; Accepted 2 September 2014; Published 15 September 2014 Academic Editor: Hiroshi Hashizume Copyright © 2014 Gianfranco Cervellin et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. his study was aimed at investigating the prevalence of hyponatremia in patients with intracapsular femoral neck fracture. All records containing clinical and laboratory information of patients admitted with femoral neck fractures to the Academic Hospital of Parma (Italy) during the year 2013 were retrieved from the hospital database. he control population consisted of subjects admitted to the outpatient phlebotomy center during the same period. he inal population consisted of 543 patients with femoral neck fractures and 700 outpatients. he category of elderly subjects (i.e., ≥65 years) included 491 patients and 380 controls. In both the entire population and elderly subjects, serum sodium was lower in patients than in controls (138 versus 139 mmol/L,  < 0.001). he prevalence of hyponatremia was also higher in cases than in controls, both in the entire population (19.5 versus 10.4%,  < 0.001) and in elderly subjects (20.8 versus 11.8%,  < 0.001). he odds ratio of hyponatremia for femoral neck fracture was 2.08 in the entire study population and 1.95 in those aged 65 years and older. In conclusion, we found that hyponatremia is signiicantly associated with femoral neck fracture. Serum sodium should hence be regularly assessed and hyponatremia eventually corrected. 1. Introduction he falls should now be regarded as a major public health issue [1]. Approximately 424,000 fatal falls occur annually worldwide, thus representing the second leading cause of death due to accidental injury ater road traic collisions [2]. Single and repeated falls are a special health concern in the elderly. According to recent European surveys, at least 20% of people aged 65 years or older sufer at least one fall per year [3], and up to 20% of falls result in a signiicant injury in the elderly [4]. he falls are at least in part preventable, especially in the elderly [1]. he origin of the fall is typically multifactorial and includes environment-related aspects, along with person- and behaviour-related factors. Among these, gait instability has been identiied as a relatively consistent risk factor [5]. Several drugs, most notably psychotropic drugs, antihyper- tensive drugs, anticonvulsants, or multiple medications, have also been signiicantly associated with the risk of fall [6, 7]. Femur neck fractures represent one of the most serious consequences of falls in the elderly, carrying a signiicant risk of morbidity [8] and mortality, with the latter approximating a rate 13.5% at 6 months [9]. Several lines of evidence also attest that hyponatremia is a frequent disorder in the elderly, afecting up to 10% of hospitalized patients [10]. It is noteworthy that up to one-quarter of hyponatremic patients seek initial medical treatment in the Emergency Department (ED) [11]. Approx- imately 50% of these cases are due to the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (SIADH), and the remaining rate is iatrogenic in nature (most notably diuretics, psychotropic drugs, and anticonvulsants) or is associated with chronic conditions such as hypothyroidism, congestive heart failure, liver cirrhosis, and renal failure [12]. Hyponatremia, generally deined as a serum sodium concentration <136 mmol/L [13], has been recently associated Hindawi Publishing Corporation Advances in Orthopedics Volume 2014, Article ID 397059, 5 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/397059