Posts Tagged ‘Smoking’
Mom Had Osteoporosis – Do I Have It Too?
If your Mom had Osteoporosis, you are also at risk for osteoporosis and fractures. If a parent had a broken hip, you are at increased risk of fracture. Choosing your parents poorly is a risk factor you cannot avoid. Your age is the biggest risk factor that you cannot control. However, you can control other risk factors.
Fracture Prevention – Not Bone Mineral Density
The goal of Bone Health Evaluation and Treatment is Fracture Prevention! DXA and Bone Mineral Density (BMD) are useful tools for evaluation. But DXA and BMD are only one out of many tools for bone health evaluation. DXA t-score and BMD should never be the sole goal of treatment.
As an orthopedic surgeon, my goal is always Decreasing Fracture Risk. In the USA we sometimes seem to have forgotten that real goal. We focus too much on DXA t-scores. We should focus on the patient. We should treat “Clinical Osteoporosis”. The patient deserves a complete Bone Health evaluation.
What is Clinical Osteoporosis?
Increased Fracture Risk is Clinical Osteoporosis. Clinical Osteoporosis is a diagnosis. It is a chronic medical condition that you have for the rest of your life, like high blood pressure. It can never be fully “cured”, but it can be fully controlled. That is what we do. We help you to Take Control.
Confusion arises because”osteoporosis” is also a Bone Mineral Density (BMD) test result, as measured by DXA. Persons with “osteoporosis” for a test result are at high risk, but so are many with “osteopenia”. In fact 6 times as many people with “osteopenia” have Fragility Fractures as people with “osteoporosis” test scores. Fractures and fracture risk matter more than test scores.