Because fractures are the biggest problem associated with osteoporosis, it is important to know what your results say about your risk for fracture. It’s also important to know that there is risk to fracturing your bones whether you are diagnosed with osteoporosis or not (meaning you may have it but don’t know it).
The life-time risk of fracturing your hip, spine, or forearm is 40% in White women and 13% in White men. If you include the potential for fracturing other bones, your risk is increased even further. For women, the lifetime risk of fracturing a hip is equivalent to or more than the combined lifetime risk of developing breast, uterine, or ovarian cancer.
If your BMD testing shows that your bones are “normal,” you are not at increased risk of fracturing a bone unless your score is between 0 and –1.0. Because scores are expressed in standard deviations, any score less than 0 represents an increased risk; the risk is small if your score is between 0 and –1.0, but it still exists. If your T-score indicates that you have osteopenia, you could be 4 times more likely to fracture a bone. But low bone mass as defined by your T-score is not the only factor that puts you at increased risk for a fracture.
Your clinician should help you understand that your age, family history of osteoporosis, previous fractures, risk of falling, and the risk of injury are other important factors when considering your risk for fracture. As you age, your risk of fracturing any bone increases.
If you are diagnosed with osteoporosis, your risk goes up even further. So if your T-score indicates that you have osteoporosis, you could be 8 times more likely to fracture a bone. If you are over 50 years of age, you have a 50% chance of suffering a fracture related to osteoporosis. And 750,000 spinal fractures occur each year. These fractures occur in people previously diagnosed with osteoporosis as well as in those who never knew they had it.