AAOS – Part 3 – Your Patient Gets Osteoporosis Information Where?

You know that your patient was placed on Calcium Citrate, Vitamin D3 and medication after her first fragility fracture.  Now she is back with another fracture.  You notice that none of these are on her current med list of what she really takes.  Neither are a lot of other meds that her primary provider had prescribed.  Why?

Perhaps she Googled her osteoporosis medication and found lots of sites that guaranteed her teeth would fall out and her femurs break if she took that, or any other, medication.  Similar predictions of disaster haunted her diabetes and blood pressure meds.

Perhaps she read the internet ad that I saw while reading a peer reviewed article on a medical website last week.  It touted a cure for osteoporosis that avoided any “dangerous medications”.  It stated that a specific amino-acid bound calcium is better absorbed than anything else and eliminates the need for ANY medications.  The testimonial was that years of standard treatment had not increased a DXA score but that a mere 5 months on this supplement alone had increased the spine bone mineral density by 27 percent!  Only vertebral compression fractures can give results that spectacular that quickly.

This blog is my answer for my patients.  Perhaps it can help your patients too.  And I welcome others to join me placing reliable orthopedic information on the internet.

Jay Ginther, MD, FAAOS

Feb 2011

Categorised in: Healthcare Professionals