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Osteoporosis Awareness and Prevention

Early intervention for fracture prevention and building bones for life

“Early Intervention for Fracture Prevention and Building Bones for Life” is a project aimed at providing and linking to information that can help improve bone health and prevent fractures in our patients.  This project takes advantage of the recently published World Health Organization’s absolute risk prediction model for fractures and also contains an educational arm for providers, ancillary staff and patients.  Our intent is to provide a framework for and guidance toward more proactive, effective and comprehensive care of these patients so that ultimately the incidence of major osteoporosis-related fractures is reduced.

Recommendations for all post-menopausal women and men age 50 and older:

Evaluate

• Clinic risk factors for osteoporosis
• Secondary causes
• Adequacy of calcium and vitamin D
• Fall risk

Advise

• Regular weight-bearing exercise and muscle strengthening exercise
• Avoidance of tobacco and excessive alcohol

DXA exam

• Women age 65 and older, men age 70 and older
• Women and men age 50 to 70 with risk factors
• Those with low trauma fracture

Treat

• Hip or vertebral fractures
• DXA T-scores of ≤ 2.5 at central site
• DXA T-score of -1 to -2.5 at central site plus10-year hip fracture probability ≥ 3% or major osteoporosis-related fracture probability ≥ 20% by FRAX®

Risk prediction

• World Health Organization (WHO) absolute risk prediction tool: www.shef.ac.uk/FRAX

Links to other useful information

National Osteoporosis Foundation (www.nof.org)

International Osteoporosis Foundation (www.iofbonehealth.org)

International Society for Clinical Densitometry, Inc. (www.iscd.org)

Provider documents

Early Intervention for Fracture Prevention and Building Bones for Life project mission

Recommendations for improving bone health

Fragility Fracture Notification Letter

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