Abstract:
Background: Hip fracture, the most sinister clinical outcome of osteoporosis, is associated with
disability, hospitalization, multi-morbidity and death. Many Asian countries lack an effective
and coordinated system to detect high fracture risk patients early.
Objective: To identify risk factors and comorbidities associated with hip fracture (HF) among
patients admitted to Teaching Hospital Karapitiya (THK).
Methods: Patients with incident fragility HF (n=180) admitted to THK and age and sex
matched 348 subjects free of HF selected from the neighborhood of HF patients were included
in this case-control study. Only new hip fractures resulted from falls of standing height or less
were included. Hip fractures due to heavy injuries were excluded. Data were collected using an
interviewer-administered questionnaire.
Results: The two groups were similar with regards to smoking, alcohol consumption and the
usage of glucocorticoids. The prevalence of any type of previous fragility fracture (7.8% vs
3.4%) and family history of fragility fracture (8.9% vs 3.4%) were higher in the HF patients
(p<0.05 and p<0.01). The 66.7% of HF patients had one or more comorbidities (83.9%,
p<0.01). The HF patients had a greater prevalence of comorbidities such as peripheral vascular
disease, cerebrovascular disease, peptic ulcer disease, liver diseases, neoplasm, hypertension,
bronchial asthma, vision impairment and hearing impairment at the time of hospitalization
(p<0.01).
Conclusions: This study revealed several risk factors of HF in the local population. Such
information can be used in the development of a risk score to detect those with high fracture risk
in the local population.
