Determining the hierarchy of risk factors for low-energy fractures in patients of an Osteoporosis Treatment Clinic.

Introduction and objective: The medical records were examined of 222 patients of the Osteoporosis Treatment Clinic at the Central Clinical Hospital of the Medical University of Łódź, Poland. The influence was analyzed of 27 clinical risk factors on the occurrence of low-energetic fractures in this population. The aim of the research was to find possible dependencies between different risk factors, and the actual fractures that were recorded in the database.

Material and methods: For each risk factor and for each category (e.g., patients with diabetes and patients without diabetes), the percentage was computed of patients who had incidents osteoporotic fractures, and the percentage of those without fractures. Student's t-test and Pearson's chi-squared test were used to find statistically significant risk factors.

Results: Statistically significant risk factors were found: age, chronic kidney disease, T-scores of the femoral neck and T-score of the lumbar spine, serum phosphate levels, FRAX-BMD, FRAX-BMI, and the type of diet.

Conclusions: Some observations concerning the influence of individual risk factors on the occurrence of fractures are consistent with those presented in the literature. However, it was also noticed that the patients with hyperthyroidism, rheumatic diseases, diabetes, cancer or gastrointestinal diseases, had a smaller percentage of fractures than the patients who did not have these diseases. This may be explained by the small number of those having these diseases, or by the fact that they had already received appropriate treatment.