[Patient Care] Nearly 30 million women have either osteoporosis or low bone mass and the numbers are rising. Preventing osteoporosis is more than an issue of deteriorating quality of life. For an ever-growing number of baby boomers, it may even be a matter of life and death, considering that there is a 20% increase in mortality in the year following hip fracture. Fracture risk is part and parcel of the very definition of this major public health problem: "a skeletal disorder characterized by compromised bone strength predisposing a person to an increased risk of fracture."1

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Patient Care, July 2004