Osteoporosis is a multifactorial systemic skeletal disease, characterized by low bone mass and microarchitectural modifications of bone tissue, with a consequent increase in fragility fractures. Vertebral fractures are the most prevalent osteoporotic fractures and osteoporotic hip fractures are the most serious complication of osteoporosis resulting in increased mortality and high socio-economic cost. The coexistence of these two pathological conditions in elderly patients has been previously described, leading to even worse functional outcomes than each one alone.
To determine the prevalence of vertebral fractures in osteoporotic hip fractured women and to evaluate the relationship between prevalence of vertebral fractures and pre-existing factors such us autonomy in daily life activity, quality of walking, numbers of falls, cognitive aspects and comorbidities. 946 osteoporotic hip fractured women aged more than 60 years and with an X-ray evaluation of spine were consecutively enrolled in 25 Orthopaedic, Physical Medicine and geriatric centers in Italy. After spine X-ray morphometry patients were divided in two groups: previous vertebral fracture (F) and no previous fracture (NF). Moreover anamnestic, demographical and outcome related data (ADL, IADL, CIRS, SPMSQ, FAC and RANKIN scale) were collected. Prevalent vertebral fractures were present in 502 (54%) patients. 119 (13.7%) patients had at least one severe fracture. The F compared to NF group showed statistically significant worse scores regarding the pre hip fracture values of RANKIN, CIRS, SPMSQ, IADL and the overall number of falls (p<0.001). Moreover the F group showed statistically significant lower values of serif 25(OH)D than NF group (p<.0.001). Previous Vertebral fractures in hip fractured patients are a common issue and negatively influence several functional and cognitive outcome measures in these patients
