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Hip fractures in the elderly without osteoporosis
13 Orthopaedic Department, KAT Hospital, Athens, Greece.
Abstract:
In clinical practice, hip fracture is a very common reason for hospital admission in the elderly. Most subjects over the age of 65 years, experience an injury at the hip mostly after a fall. Many elderly persons suffer from osteoporosis, which is characterised by loss of bone mass and deterioration of bone microarchitecture thus increasing the susceptibility to fracture. Osteoporosis is defined by WHO as a Bone Mineral Density (BMD) of 2.5 standard deviations (SD) below that of a young adult as assessed by dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA). It has been shown that some patients with a hip fracture have either normal or "osteopenic" hips as defined by DXA (-2.5
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