Hip breaks more deadly than some cancers in elderly, study finds

A recent analysis found poor survival rates after bone fractures in older adults, with fewer than a third of men and half of women surviving five years after a fracture.

Published in JBMR Plus, the study looked at a cohort of 98,474 Ontario residents age 66 and older who suffered fractures to parts of the body associated with osteoporosis between January 2011 and March 2015. The patients were grouped into sets based on the fracture site and matched to patients with a similar demographic profile but no bone breaks during the study period.

The fracture cohort was mostly female (73 percent), and the median age at fracture was 80. In the year before the fracture, up to 45 percent of the women and 14 percent of the men had been treated for osteoporosis.

The analysis revealed that those within a year of a hip, vertebral or proximal non-hip, non-vertebral fracture were at the highest risk of death. The survival probability was lower for the oldest patients.

“Survival most dramatically declined within one month after most types of fracture, with a five-year survival being similar to or worse than some common cancers,” the paper’s lead author, Laval University department of medicine professor Jacques Brown, said

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Source: Washington Post, 12 May 2024