A solution to the near epidemiological problem of hip fracture in the elderly population has to address the two major shortcomings of current standard of care in parallel, which are the inability of current methods in identifying individuals at-risk prior to first fracture and the lack of effective treatment options once elevated risk is established. The specific aim of this research proposal is to address the latter, more specifically to carry out a series of in silico clinical trials for quantifying the biomechanical efficacy of novel minimally invasive personalized surgical procedures for preventing hip fractures.
Osteoporosis is one of the chronic diseases that significantly impacts the elderly population. It is characterized by reduced bone mass, resulting in increased bone fragility and increased fracture risk with age. Of all fracture types, hip fractures have the most severe socioeconomic consequences. Elevated hip fracture risk is generally addressed either pharmacologically or through life style interventions. However, the diagnosis of osteoporosis and thus the establishment of pathology is based on a statistical threshold (T-score) of bone density measurements (aBMD) that suffers from low sensitivity and is in fact not directly linked to the patient outcome that the clinicians want to prevent. Furthermore, pharmacological treatment, after fracture risk has been established, is ineffective in terms of preventing hip fractures. Life style changes on the other hand suffer from low patient compliance.
