Osteoporosis. Definition. Epidemiology

Abstract

Osteoporosis is a disease that has existed since man made his appearance on earth. There is a complete description of osteoporosis and its complications in the Bible, in the Book of Ecclesiastes. However, it was not until the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when it was mentioned and its dissemination and knowledge took a great boost from 1940 with the publication of the first works of Fuller Albright and his investigators in England, who initially called it postmenopausal osteoporosis. It is due to the presence of low bone mass, either due to insufficient calcification of the bone or due to loss of bone mass. It is a disease related to gender and aging, affecting women more than men, could be called a gender-related (female) disease and aging. Bone loss, about 0.5 % per year, begins in women around age 35 and continues during the transition to menopause when it increases. The man, on the other hand, initiates bone loss later, hence Albright defined it as postmenopausal osteoporosis, for loss of bone mass in an architecturally normal bone and to solely estrogenic failure. Being more common in women than men due to early gonadal failure, which can vary between 5 and 8:1. Being female and postmenopausal is a high risk for developing osteoporosis, which must be considered a serious public health problem due to its high incidence and global extension, creating a social problem due to the deterioration in the quality of life and an economic problem, due to the high costs of its treatment and care for the patient in the home. Recognizing this situation obliges the continued research for greater knowledge of this disease, to be able to take the necessary measures related to prevention and its therapeutic possibilities. It affects the Caucasian white woman, then the yellow, the Latin American, and finally the Black population. Its presence in the world is very high varying according to the races of the people in different countries. In Venezuela we find in our consultation 27.1 %, this is not a national figure because it is a private consultation, but it does prove its existence. There are some very important risk factors in developing osteoporosis, where the genetic part plays a very important role, in addition to the lifestyles and social habits. Its most severe complication is the hip fracture, which has a mortality rate of 30 %, not from osteoporosis itself, but because of the complications arising from this picture, where infections, pulmonary thromboembolism, and myocardial infarction are the most common.