'Skeletal Age' for mapping the impact of fracture on mortality
Publication Details
Tran, T.,
Ho-Le, T.,
Bliuc, D.,
Abrahamsen, B.,
Hansen, L.,
Vestergaard, P.,
Center, J. R.,
&
Nguyen, T. V.
(2023).
'Skeletal Age' for mapping the impact of fracture on mortality.
eLife, 12.
Abstract
Background: Fragility fracture is associated with an increased risk of mortality, but mortality is not part of doctor-patient communication. Here, we introduce a new concept called ‘Skeletal Age’ as the age of an individual’s skeleton resulting from a fragility fracture to convey the combined risk of fracture and fracture-associated mortality for an individual.
Methods: We used the Danish National Hospital Discharge Register which includes the wholecountry data of 1,667,339 adults in Denmark born on or before January 1, 1950, who were followed up to December 31, 2016 for incident low-trauma fracture and mortality. Skeletal age is defined as the sum of chronological age and the number of years of life lost (YLL) associated with a fracture. Cox’s proportional hazards model was employed to determine the hazard of mortality associated with a specific fracture for a given risk profile, and the hazard was then transformed into YLL using the Gompertz law of mortality.
Results: During the median follow-up period of 16 years, there had been 307,870 fractures and 122,744 post-fracture deaths. A fracture was associated with between 1 and 7 years of life lost, with the loss being greater in men than women. Hip fractures incurred the greatest loss of life years. For instance, a 60-year-old individual with a hip fracture is estimated to have a skeletal age of 66 for men and 65 for women. Skeletal Age was estimated for each age and fracture site stratified by gender.
Conclusions: We propose ‘Skeletal Age’ as a new metric to assess the impact of a fragility fracture on an individual’s life expectancy. This approach will enhance doctor-patient risk communication about the risks associated with osteoporosis.
Funding: National Health and Medical Research Council in Australia and Amgen Competitive Grant Program 2019.
Keywords
skeletal age, osteoporosis, fragility fracture, fracture-associated mortality
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