Bunion Surgery and Fall Risk in Older Adults: Claims-Based Cohort Study

127,990 patients aged 50 and over with hallux valgus were analyzed from a national healthcare claims database spanning January 2011 to April 2022. The study compares 17,406 surgical patients to non-surgical controls, tracking falls via diagnosis codes over a median follow-up of up to 2905 days. The dataset, provided by a figshare admin, supports the findings of a published research article.

Use Cases

• Model the relationship between bunion surgery status and fall risk using adjusted hazard ratios and absolute risk percentages.
• Analyze temporal trends in fall incidence using diagnosis codes tracked over an 11-year period.
• Compare patient outcomes between surgical and non-surgical groups based on covariates like age and follow-up duration.
• Investigate the distribution of key study metrics, such as the 5% vs 8% one-year fall rate and the 16% vs 21% long-term fall rate.

Strengths

• Large cohort of 127,990 patients with hallux valgus, including 17,406 surgical cases.
• Longitudinal data with a median follow-up time of 2905 days for the surgery group.
• Study period covers over 11 years, from January 2011 to April 2022.

Limitations

• Dataset is very small (76.6 KB), suggesting it contains summary statistics or supplementary material, not the raw patient-level data.
• Specific patient-level columns and raw data rows are unknown, limiting detailed analysis.
• Relies on claims-based diagnosis codes for falls, which may not capture all fall events.

Provenance

Source

PearlDiver, Inc. national database of commercial, state, and federal healthcare claims.

Collection Method

Retrospective cohort study comparing patients who underwent bunion surgery to those treated nonoperatively.

Time Range

January 2011 to April 2022.

Freshness

Data covers a period ending in April 2022; the record was last updated in April 2026.

Geography

United States.