Hip Fracture: A Nutritional Perspective (43408)

Hip fracture is the most important skeletal problem confronting the developed nations. In Finland, for example, it accounts for nearly 10% of all acute surgical beds and it annually costs every Western nation in the range of 8 to 20 million U.S. dollars per million population. These already high figures are certain to rise as the number of the old elderly increase. Nutrition plays a role in this problem not simply through the effect of calcium intake on bone mass, but in the falls that precede most fractures, in the amount of soft tissue hip padding to cushion the impact of a fall, and in the recovery both from the injury and from the even greater assault of its repair.