{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02496255616575137, 'fraction_numerical': 0.01347978032950574, 'mean_word_length': 4.742120343839542, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in a geriatric patient with a hip fracture. A case report.

In March 2003, there was an outbreak of atypical pneumonia in Hong Kong. The World Health Organization (WHO) has termed the illness severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The disease is highly contagious and has spread rapidly throughout the world. Globally, there were more than 3000 reported cases and 154 related deaths as of April 14, 2003 1.

We report a case of an eighty-one-year-old woman who sustained an intertrochanteric fracture. Her postoperative course was complicated by a suspected aspiration pneumonia. She did not have the typically reported clinical features of SARS or a definite history of contact with a patient with SARS. She died of severe respiratory failure. An autopsy showed typical findings of SARS.

An eighty-one-year-old woman who resided in a home for the elderly had a history of chronic obstructive airway disease. She had no history of contact with a SARS patient. She was admitted to the orthopaedic ward after a fall on March 16, 2003. Radiographs of the left hip showed a comminuted intertrochanteric fracture. A closed reduction and Asiatic Gamma nail fixation was performed with the patient under spinal anesthesia one day after admission. The operation was uneventful and was completed in forty-five minutes. Postoperatively, the patient's dentures were missing, and a radiograph of the chest was made to rule out aspiration. The radiograph showed only a hyperinflated lung. On the first postoperative day, oxygen desaturation and mild shortness of breath developed. A chest radiograph revealed bilateral pulmonary infiltrates in the middle and lower lobes ( Fig. 1 ). A pulmonary medicine consultation was obtained on the second postoperative day, and a provisional diagnosis of aspiration pneumonia was made on the basis of the episode of suspected aspiration. The clinical picture did not suggest SARS in view of leukocytosis (a leukocyte count of 14 × …