The risk and prevention of hip fractures

✍ Scribed by Steven R. Cummings

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1984
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 461 KB
• Volume: 4
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0894-1912
• DOI: 10.1002/chp.4760040313

✦ Synopsis

M lived alone, cared for herself and her apartment and enjoyed walking up to 1-2 miles a day to play canasta at a local club and collect shells from a beach near her home. Early this year she slipped on a few rain-slicked concrete steps and broke her hip.

She spent nine days in the hospital. Six months later we visited Mrs. 0. at home. She had difficulty getting out of a chair and difficulty dressing herself. She now uses a walker just to go across the room. She has fallen several times, is now afraid to leave her apartment, never goes to the beach anymore and most of her housekeeping now goes undone. This is a common story among patients we have studied who have suffered hip fractures, and it's a story that could have been prevented.

Fractures of hip, arms, spine, pelvis all occur more commonly in the elderly and more commonly in women than in men. But the most important of these fractures are the hip fractures. About 200 thousand hip fractures occur every year, most of them in women, costing over 1 billion dollars for medical care, leaving 30-50 percent of women more disabled or dependent than before the fracture. 15-20 percent of those who were previously independent enter longterm care institutions.

Fifteen percent of white women will break a hip at some time in their lives. One-third of those who live to age 90 will have broken their hip.

Over 90 percent of these hip fractures occur Q 1984 by The Regents of the