Statistical Facts about Osteoporosis
Dr.Kut | Dec 31, 2010 | Comments 1
Osteoporosis is a major health problem throughout the world. In people with this disease, the bones become thin and fragile and eventually break. While more women are affected, men suffer as well.
This disease threatens 28 million Americans, 80 percent of whom are women. In fact, nearly 40 percent of white women and 13 percent of white men in the United States will have an osteoporotic fracture sometime in their lives.This is a serious health problem because nearly 1 in 4 women over the age of 65, 1 in 2 women over the age of 80, and 1 in 10 men over the age of 80 will get this disease.
Worldwide, the disease causes nearly 2 million hip fractures each year. Osteoporotic fractures can become lifethreatening; nearly 24 percent of elderly people who suffer a hip fracture die within the first year of the fracture, and many others can never live independently again.
Osteoporosis, like many chronic diseases such as heart disease and arthritis, has no early symptoms, and until recently it was not diagnosed until after the age of 70 or after a fracture had already occurred.
Recently, major medical advances in the diagnosis, prevention, and
treatment of osteoporosis have brought this disease to the spotlight
and offered new hope to sufferers. Doctors can now determine, at
about age 50 or even earlier, a patient’s risk of developing osteoporosis by measuring his or her bone density. Also, several new medications have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration both to prevent osteoporosis and to treat it. And with our growing understanding of the life cycle of bone and of which types of persons risk developing osteoporosis, doctors can now begin to prevent and treat this disease effectively.
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Filed Under: Bones, Joints and Muscles
Osteoporosis is a disease which affects the skeleton and is characterised by low bone mass, deterioration of bone tissue.People with osteoporosis most often break bones in the hip, spine, and wrist.