This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

The hip joint is a well-known point of failure in the human body, especially as we age. It's no wonder the problem is familiar: In the U.S. alone, someone fractures a hip roughly twice every minute; it happens 27 times a minute worldwide.

Most of us could correctly identify the typical patient. They're in late life (the average age at the time of fracture is 81). They're more likely to be female than male. Whether they know it or not, they tend to have low bone density or osteoporosis. And in most cases, the fractures come after a fall.

Hip fractures could be understood as an inevitable risk that comes with advanced age—and, as our society ages, more should be expected.

But the authors of a review article recently published in JAMA hope to shake us out of resignation.

They show that hip fractures are both terribly serious—with more than one in five patients dying within a year of their fracture—and at least partly preventable, both by preserving bone health and by avoiding the falls that cause them.

In her practice, co-author Joy Tsai, an endocrinologist and Harvard Medical School assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, is continually reminded how hormonal changes in late life can cause serious degradation in bone quality that makes fractures far more likely. (Tsai will discuss those changes at an Oct.

Source link