Osteoporosis international : a journal established as result of cooperation between the European Foundation for Osteoporosis and the National Osteoporosis Foundation of the USA
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The proportion of the population over the age of retirement has risen in many countries, and this means there is a corresponding rise in the incidence of hip fractures. However, in order to reliably investigate the ability of interventions to prevent fracture, there needs to be a reliable measure of the incidence of hip fracture. The purpose of this study was to examine the inclusion and exclusion criteria used to identify hip fracture from hospital admission data and to examine the impact that these criteria have on estimated incidence of hip fracture. ⋯ Two percent (2%) of the people studied had an operation for a hip fracture but did not have a hip fracture diagnosis (many had a multiple fracture diagnosis), and 5.5% of the people studied had an elective admission for the hip fracture (perhaps falling in hospital during an elective admission). We conclude that the selection criteria can have a great influence on the number of hip fractures identified using routine data. There should be a standardized selection procedure for the identification of hip fracture, as this would enable interventions and preventive measures to be evaluated over time and facilitate comparisons of rates in different regions and countries, in order to examine factors associated with hip fracture.
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The Internet provides great opportunities for patient healthcare education, but poses risks that inaccurate, outdated, or harmful information will be disseminated. Osteoporosis is a topic of great interest to patients, many of whom use the Internet to obtain medical information. The aim of this study was to develop and evaluate measurement tools to determine the quality of osteoporosis websites for patients. ⋯ In summary, a tool for measuring the quality of medical websites was developed and evaluated. Significant variability in osteoporosis-website quality was observed. Higher-quality scores were associated with a higher level of search engine match and specific URL suffixes. A validated tool for evaluating medical websites may have value in assisting patients to select high-quality osteoporosis educational information on the Internet, and may encourage website developers to improve the quality of information that is provided.