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Hip protector not effective in preventing hip fractures.

Women's Health Weekly

| May 08, 2003 | COPYRIGHT 2003 NewsRX. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)Copyright

2003 MAY 8 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- A certain type of hip protector studied was not effective in preventing hip fractures, according to Natasja M. van Schoor, MSc, and colleagues from the Vrije Universiteit Medical Center, Amsterdam.

Worldwide, the annual number of hip fractures is expected to increase from 1.66 million in 1990 to 6.26 million in 2050, according to background information in the article, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. This is caused by not only the increasing number of elderly people, but also an increase in the age-adjusted incidence of hip fracture.

The consequences of hip fractures can be severe. During the year following a hip fracture, the death rate is about 17-33%; after 1 year, 25-33% of patients are severely disabled or cannot walk at all. An intervention developed to try to prevent hip fractures is the hip protector. According to the authors, when a person falls on the hip, the hip protector is designed to absorb and/or shunt away the impact toward the soft tissues to keep the force on the trochanter (a part of the hip bone) below the fracture threshold. Several randomized controlled trials have been performed to examine the effectiveness of external hip protectors in reducing the incidence of hip fractures, but the results are controversial.

The researchers examined the effectiveness of hip protectors in reducing the incidence of hip fractures in an elderly high-risk population. The study was a randomized controlled trial of elderly persons aged 70 years or older, who had low bone density, and were at high risk for falls.

In total, 830 elderly people from 45 homes or apartment houses for the elderly and nursing homes in the Amsterdam area were screened for risk of hip fracture. Of these, 561 had a high risk for hip fracture and were assigned to the intervention (n=276) or control (n=285) group by individual ...

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Source: HighBeam Research, Hip protector not effective in preventing hip fractures.

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