Denton Cruse had no idea what he was in for when he attempted to wrestle a 250-pound television set out of an entertainment center last April. “I felt something pop,” the Atlanta marketing consultant recalls. “There was incredible pain. It was extremely difficult sleeping, getting out of bed, getting out of a chair or sitting down.” What Cruse experienced was a compression fracture in his vertebra, a condition that might have been prevented had Cruse and his medical providers known that he was at risk for such a break. At 63, Cruse is relatively young to experience such a fracture, but the issue should be on the radar screen for anyone reaching the half-century mark - especially women who begin to lose bone mass more rapidly after menopause. “Something like 10 million Americans have osteoporosis, a significant loss of bone mass, and another 33 to 34 million have low bone mass (or osteopenia) and are also at risk for fractures,” stresses Dr. Ethel Siris, president of the National Osteoporosis Foundation, and a professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University in New York. “We know that one in two women and probably one in five men will fracture a bone because of osteoporosis-related issues after age 50.” However, Siris and other bone health experts are hopeful that a new method for assessing fracture risk will give clinicians and their patients the information they need to do a much better job of preventing fractures in the future. It's not just about bone density A hallmark of the new approach is that it takes many factors into account to determine a person's risk of fracture. In the past, clinicians mainly relied on results from a bone mineral density test - a measure of bone mass - to determine whether a person should be placed on a bone-strengthening drug. However, in studies over a number of years in multiple countries, investigators associated with the World Health Organization have verified that many other factors are important in determining fracture risk as well. These include height, weight, age and gender. To help clinicians make better treatment decisions for their patients, researchers have developed a simple online tool called Frax that takes all these factors into account, weighs each one and performs a calculation that enables clinicians to determine a person's estimated risk of experiencing a fracture in the next 10 years. Dr. Roberto Pacifici, director of the Division of Endocrinology at Emory University, believes the new tool will help to correct mistakes by arming health practitioners and patients with a more detailed picture to make better decisions. Anytime someone breaks a bone from something other than a massive trauma, their skeletal system needs to be examined more closely to make sure that it is not a symptom of a larger problem, says Dr. Scott Boden, director of the Orthopaedics and Spine Center at Emory. For example, Cruse fractured his foot five years before breaking a vertebra, but the incident was simply viewed at the time as a freak accident. He is taking the vertebral fracture much more seriously, however, even though surgery and physical therapy have enabled him to fully recover. “I take a full dose of calcium and vitamin D every day, and I do stretching exercises that the physical therapist gave me to strengthen my back muscles,” he says. “They help to keep me in the right position so that I am less likely to be doing things the wrong way.” - Cox News Service __
