Hands up
When doctors want to find out if we have osteoporosis they may send us for dual-energy x-ray absorbtiometry scans, which can measure our bone mineral density (BMD) all over our bodies. Most of these tests may concentrate on calculating our BMD in our hips, lumbar spine or wrist, as these are areas that commonly suffer fractures. Figures show that the wellbeing of 1.7 million of us across the world is affected by hip fractures, with up to a fifth of us suffering fatal effects from breakages.
Sweden’s Karolinska Institute recently decided to test a new screening method for osteoporosis by looking at scans of hands instead of hips. Researchers were keen to see if health trusts throughout the world could offer quicker and affordable scans that mean we can start caring for our bones before fractures occur.
X-rays
Clinicians from the institute looked at a database of 8,000 x-rays then compared them with the participants’ hip fracture rates that were recorded in a second registry. The hand x-rays revealed information about the BMD in the small bones of the hand of the people concerned. The researchers found that fracture rates were increased in those who had low BMD in the hand x-rays.
This indicates that hand x-rays may be sufficient when it comes to predicting our future fracture risk. Osteoporosis is sometimes called a silent disease as we often don’t know we may suffer from it until our bones become so weak they fracture easily. These simple hand x-rays may pave the way for health boards across the world to act in a more preventative way to reduce the number of us who suffer from breakages in the first place.