January 2017 Vol. 5 No.1

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Original Research Article

Rates of Osteoporosis Screening Among Patients Attending Orthopedics Surgery Clinics, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Waleed M. Awwad*, Abdulaziz S. Almutair, Khalid A. Alsaleh, Nadia A. Aljomah, Kholoud A. Alfouzan and Omar S. Almutair

Department of orthopedic Surgery, College of Medicine, King Saud university, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

*Corresponding Authors E-mail: wmawwad@gmail.com

Accepted January 30, 2017

Abstract

Introduction: Osteoporosis is a decreased bone density disease. It has become one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in the world wide. Our aim in this study is to determine the rate of osteoporosis screening among patients attending the orthopedic surgery clinics and to detect the rate of physicians who are following the recommendation of national osteoporosis foundations.
Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study design was conducted in the orthopedic surgery clinics at King Saud university medical city in Riyadh SA. All male and females’ patients 70 years or older in males and 65 years or older for females for a total of 951 patients attended the orthopedic surgery clinic from 16/05/2015-31/08/2016.
Results: A total number of 951 patients were included in our study. Of which 487 were screened for osteoporosis by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) SCAN (51.2%). Among them, 430 were females (64.66%) and 57 were males (19.93%). 113 were normal (23.20%). 172 had osteopenia (35.31%) and 190 had osteoporosis (39.01 %). The remaining 12 were not retrievable (2.5%). Results were also analyzed by physician practices to illustrate differences in physicians’ rates of screening. Rates ranged from 25% to 72.5% with (standard deviation 12%).
Conclusions: Physicians need to be fully aware about the importance of applying the National Osteoporosis Foundation recommendations. Only half of the patients in this study had been screened, 40% of them had osteoporosis. Following the guidelines properly will help us detect early osteoporotic changes thus preventing the progression of the disease.

Key words: BMD testing, DXA scan, Osteopenia, Prevalence of osteoporosis.