Prevalence of Osteopenia and Osteoporosis in Orthopaedic Outpatients in Southern India

Introduction: Osteoporosis is a common metabolic bone disorder yet, it is underdiagnosed and undertreated in clinical settings. Many studies have shown that, as part of the treatment of fragility fractures, early osteoporosis screening by orthopaedic surgeon, can lead to better management. Even better would be if orthopaedic surgeons could prevent these fragility fractures by routine Bone Mineral Density (BMD) screening in indicated patients to diagnose it early and treat them before fracture occurs. Aim: To find out the age-related prevalence of osteopenia and osteoporosis in patients who attend orthopaedic outpatient clinics in southern India, using quantitative calcaneal ultrasound . Materials and Methods: This was a multicentric cross-sectional study conducted between January 2017 to September 2017 in seven centres in the union territory of Puducherry and one centre in the state of Tamil Nadu. The patients were divided into young (55 years) groups and screened using quantitative calcaneal ultrasound and then BMD was grouped as normal, osteopenia and osteoporosis according to WHO T-score criteria. Statistical analysis were done using SPSS version 23.0. Analysis were carried out at 5% level of significance and p