In an Aging America, Osteoporosis Is a Looming Public Health Crisis

This op-ed initially appeared in The Hill on October 20, 2022.

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The united states has a bone wellbeing crisis. Additional than 50 million Us citizens are at risk of building osteoporosis, and 10 million by now have the affliction. A whole 80 % of all those persons are women. In simple fact, 1 in five women in excess of 50 will get the disorder during their life time.

Still, even with its prevalence, osteoporosis is recognized as a “silent ailment.” The moniker arrives from the point that people often have significantly brittle bones prone to fracture devoid of realizing it or sensation their bone density lessen. But the name is also apt due to the fact there is still much too minimal consciousness about osteoporosis, how to avoid or hold off its onset, and what to do the moment it is been diagnosed.

But on this Globe Osteoporosis Day, we can modify that. And we will have to consider since the consequences of osteoporosis-related fractures are serious for as well quite a few ladies, their family members and our country as a complete.

Our bones are built up of living tissue, which is frequently becoming damaged down and replaced. When the human body loses previous bone tissue extra rapidly than it regenerates new tissue, which is when osteoporosis sets in. At this stage, the remaining bones can become so weak and fragile that even basic movements like stretching, twisting, bending to the flooring, coughing, bumping into anything or a modest tumble can trigger a broken bone.

These broken bones — most usually of the hip and spine — are dangerously typical. In accordance to a 2021 report commissioned by the Bone Wellbeing and Osteoporosis Basis, about 1.8 million Medicare beneficiaries experienced around 2.1 million osteoporotic fractures in 2016. And just very last thirty day period, researchers in Hong Kong found that hip fractures will nearly double around the world by 2050.

Girls are specifically at hazard for osteoporosis and often encounter speedy bone loss, specifically in the 5 to seven decades after menopause, as their estrogen levels drop. Ladies may possibly even eliminate up to 20 p.c of their bone density in this limited time body on your own. Ultimately, 50 per cent of girls are probable to break a bone from the disorder.

Hip fractures are particularly pernicious. Women’s chance of fracturing a hip from osteoporosis is equivalent to the chance of breast, uterine and ovarian cancer put together. Certainly, you study that correct.

And which is not all. Additional girls die every single calendar year from issues subsequent hip fractures than from breast most cancers. Amongst females in excess of 50 who split a hip, 25 p.c die in the year following their injuries, even though 50 percent never walk independently again and 20 p.c will have to permanently move to a nursing property. All told, people osteoporotic fractures trigger much more hospitalizations and greater health care costs than coronary heart assault, stroke or breast cancer in ladies 55 and more mature.

The economic burdens of this ailment are significant, far too. The overall annually expense of supplying treatment for Medicare beneficiaries who undergo osteoporotic fractures was estimated at $57 billion in 2018. That selection features direct medical expenditures as effectively as indirect societal expenditures that appear from lost productiveness and informal caregiving. These expenses are anticipated to balloon to a lot more than $95 billion in 2040. With America’s aging populace, this must alarm every person.

But it does not have to be this way. Managing osteoporosis is properly in just our capabilities. We know that diet plans prosperous in calcium and vitamin D can aid hold bones powerful. Avoiding caffeine, extra salt, alcohol and using tobacco — all of which can possibly contribute to bone loss or raise the chance of fracture — is critical. Weight-bearing and muscle mass-strengthening physical exercise is important, too. In fact, strength education can in fact the two mood and delay bone reduction as effectively as make bones again more robust.

But people aren’t our only equipment. Preventive bone density scans, or twin-electrical power x-ray absorptiometry scans (DXA for quick), are uncomplicated, pain-free and economical. They are also incredibly successful. DXA scans can much better predict damaged bones than cholesterol screening can predict heart assaults or using someone’s blood stress can forecast a stroke. As it turns out, Medicare beneficiaries who have a DXA bone density test experience 35 percent less hip fractures and 22 p.c fewer fragility fractures.

The issues is also several people today who are at possibility for osteoporosis are receiving these scans. In 2007, Medicare minimize its reimbursement for scans accomplished in a doctor’s business and there has been a drastic drop in the quantity of sufferers receiving them at any time considering the fact that. In accordance to the Fracture Avoidance Coalition, the minimized obtain to DXA scans conveniently done in a doctor’s office environment considering that 2008 has meant that 7 million much less gals had their bone density examined. This amount will only improve except a little something is finished.

These alarming stats are why it is absolutely critical for Congress to go H.R. 3517, the Growing Obtain to Osteoporosis Testing for Medicare Beneficiaries Act of 2021, without having delay. This bill will increase entry to DXA scans for Medicare beneficiaries by reinstating Medicare funding for the procedure. When sufferers are far more quickly and correctly identified and dealt with, they will be better equipped to choose care of them selves and their long-term health and fitness. Amplified tests will also lessen our country’s astronomical health care prices by lessening the number of avoidable osteoporotic fractures.

The hundreds of thousands of persons, and women in certain, for whom osteoporosis is this sort of a really serious chance, are unable to wait around any longer for this monthly bill. Their well being, and often their lives, rely on it.