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VIDEO: ‘Dysmobility syndrome’ provides better understanding of fracture than osteoporosis alone
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PHILADELPHIA — “Dysmobility” implies difficulty with standing and walking that can lead to a fall and often a fracture. In this video exclusive, Neil C. Binkley, MD, professor in the divisions of geriatrics and endocrinology, associate director of the Institute on Aging and co-director or the Osteoporosis Clinical Center and Research Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, discusses the shift in thinking about osteoporosis to thinking about a dysmobility syndrome.
The exponential increase in fracture risk with age is the result of other factors in addition to bone loss—factors such muscle loss and obesity. Thinking about fracture risk as a syndrome rather than as simply a problem with bone allows physicians to act beyond prescribing medications for bone to optimizing nutrition and physical therapy, for example, Binkley said.
The dysmobility concept “takes the physician out of the role of just being a bone-drug pusher and gets us into, potentially, a therapeutic alliance with our patients to reduce the risk of falls, keep them from breaking and therefore keep them independent and maintain their quality of life,” Binkley said.