A 3-year follow-up study on bone structure elastic quality

Osteoporosis is called a silent disease because bone fragility manifests itself to the patient only in an advanced state, through fracture and pain. Medical and industry leaders recognize that the current golden standard diagnostic method, densitometry, or Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DEXA), may not always be sufficient to assess the patient’s real risk of fragility fracture [1]. Indeed, pathological alterations affect not only the mineral content (quantity) of the bone, but also its “quality”, which can be measured from the elastic properties of the bone internal trabecular structure by means of the Bone Elastic Structure Test, BES TEST®. In this study, the incidence of fragility fractures was assessed after a 3-year follow-up period in the women enrolled for a population study in 2015. The BES TEST® resulted an effective estimator of bone health, and can improve the assessment of the patient’s fracture risk map.