Osteoporosis screening in postmenopausal women

Brandon El
October 9, 2010

Osteoporosis is a condition described as a decrease in the bone density and decreasing its strength. This disorder of the skeleton weakens the bone and makes individuals much more fragile bones resulting in frequent fractures or breaks in the bones. Statistics show a rise in older women being diagnosed with osteoporosis much more often. Somewhere around fifty percent of white women will sometime in there life span have a fracture attributable to osteoporosis. Fracture rates are definitely higher in women with poorly controlled diabetes than those with well-controlled disease. It has been found to be very prevalent in women post-menopause. The well-known microvascular damage that can be caused by diabetes has been said to be directly associated with bone-loss changes.
Screenings have been put in place all over to inform, aware and prevent osteoporosis from infecting people. The different tools that deal in determining whether or not a person has osteoporosis includes the Simple Calculated Osteoporosis Risk Estimation (SCORE),Osteoporosis Self-assessment Tool (OST)
and the Osteoporosis Index of Risk (OSIRIS). Any of these test are good choices in diagnosing whether or not an individual is suffering from this disease.

My reaction to this article is a definite surprise. I had no idea that white women would be the largest group of individuals to suffer from osteoporosis and I really wonder why that is. I figured women would be more susceptible to weaker bones being that females in most cases are not as strong as men but the fact that white women had the greatest likelihood of getting it blows my mind. Does it have something to do with the way individuals were raised? Do people of color consume more calcium? It's something to think about and why aren't these screenings having any affect? Why are people waiting so late to go and get screened and why by the time they do it's already too late. What can be done to prevent these 8 million women who have been diagnosed with osteoporosis and 34 million that have osteopenia; a similar bone thinning disease but not nearly as harmful as osteoporosis? Action must be taken to slow these increasing numbers soon.

http://www.cortlandtforum.com/osteoporosis-screening-in-postmenopausal-women/article/180489/