Evaluation of the risk factors of asymptomatic vertebral fractures in postmenopausal women with osteopenia at the femoral neck

2016

To identify risk factors of asymptomatic vertebral fracture (aVF) in postmenopausal women with osteopenia at the femoral neck and to evaluate the association between the number of aVFs and the risk of major and hip osteoporotic fracture calculated with the FRAX(®) algorithm.Epidemiological case-series study with data collected transversally.728 postmenopausal women with osteopenia were included: 284 (39.0%) had aVF, of whom 200 (70.4%) had prior fragility fractures (FF). The likelihood of having an osteoporotic fracture in the next 10 years increased significantly with the number of aVF. The percentage of women with height loss, which was assessed as the difference between the greatest heig…