New study shows diagnosis and treatment problems for Osteoporosis sufferers
New study for Osteoporosis sufferers
More than half of osteoporosis sufferers are not told they have the condition and almost all get substandard treatment, a University of Western Australia study has found. Less than half of the 366 female sufferers aged over 60 admitted to Western Australian hospitals with fractures between 1997 and 2002 had been told they had the condition. Awareness was low even among high risk patients who had had hip fractures or multiple fractures as a result of the disease.
“These findings identify significant gaps in patients’ knowledge of their risk of osteoporosis,” said study leader Dr Charles Inderjeeth, from the University’s school of Population Health. They were in line with other national studies, “suggesting that the problem is uniformly poorly managed on a wider scale”. In Australia, half of women and one third of men will be affected in their lifetime by osteoporosis, which makes bones extremely porous and fragile.Australian hospitals can expect more than 200,000 osteoporotic fractures a year by 2051. A subsidised bone mineral density test is widely available and recommended to properly diagnose the condition.But the questionnaire study, published in the latest Internal Medicine Journal, found only 35 per cent of patients had undertaken the test. Only 37 % of patients were on some kind of treatment – mostly calcium tablets – after being discharged from hospital. “Most were on sub-optimal treatment and even patients in the highest risk groups, including those with recurrent fracture, were poorly managed despite effective, subsidised treatments being available,” Dr Inderjeeth said.
