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HEALTH CHECK UP? DO YOU KNOW YOUR BONE MINERAL DENSITY?
O P Kapoor
Hon. Visiting Physician, Jaslok Hospital and Bombay Hospital, Mumbai,
Ex. Hon. Prof. of Medicine, Grant Medical College and JJ Hospital, Mumbai 400 008.
Patients who had a health check up are proud that they know their blood pressure reading and blood cholesterol levels.
Undetected high blood pressure can in later life cause a stroke and paralysis. Undetected high blood cholesterol can later in life lead to a heart attack.
But does the elderly female who goes for a health check up know that she is prone to fractures of the hip, wrist and vertebra because of osteoporosis? And if one gets a fracture of the hip, on the whole one third of these patients can die! The death rate is equivalent to an attack of stroke or paralysis or an attack of myocardial infarction.
Then elderly persons specially females - after a check up, should they not know their bone mineral density? DXAs machine studies will tell you if you have osteoporosis or osteopenia and weak bones. Remember that just like after an attack of stroke, without knowing your BP, management is not complete or after an attack of myocardial infarction - without knowing your blood cholesterol levels the management is not complete - similarly an orthopaedic surgeon while treating a fracture in an elderly person cannot do justice to the management without knowing the Bone Mineral Density levels of his patient!!
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