The Consequences

Hip fractures

Without going into details, hip fractures caused by osteoporosis are increasingly serious as the disease advances. The more bone is lost, the more fragile the bone, the more broken fragments there will be and therefore the more difficult surgical treatment will be.

Hip fractures break the femur's bone continuity. The various broken fragments move with respect to each other under the effect of the fall and muscle action around the joint, among others.
Bone continuity must therefore be restored and, as far as possible, the largest fragments joined together again.

Everyone agrees on this. The controversy concerns whether or not the cause should be treated, i.e. what should be done with respect to bone loss. Most traumatologists think that nothing should be done. They are content with simply mending the fracture. We shall see later on that, here again, opinions differ on how to treat these fractures.

However, it seems logical and reasonable to treat both the consequence and the cause of the fracture during the same operation. The reason for this is that the skeleton is the only reserve, the only bank we have for the major mineral: calcium.
It is clearly essential for the skeleton. We have seen that it is the most important element quantitatively. What is less commonly known, perhaps, is that this calcium is used for many things in the body. It is essential for all nerve connections (synapses). It is essential for muscles (both skeletal and heart). It is essential to the digestive tract, intestines and liver. It is an irreplaceable element for the blood in coagulation etc.

All the organs need it and will obtain their supplies, "do their shopping" as it were, as necessary, in the only supermarket the body has, i.e. the skeleton. This store is not inexhaustible, particularly if the body is already in low supply by nature (ethnic origin, environmental factors, etc.) and, as we have already said, this fall in supply increases with age.
The cherry on the cake, as it were, is that when a bone breaks, it must reach into its own reserves to rebuild what was lost and must – in a way – consume itself in order to do so!

In a word, our skeleton is available to meet all needs but, alas, nobody can help it when it needs help itself!
Under these circumstances, why not take advantage of this accident which gives us access to the site, to work on it, to provide all the help we can as well?