What is a hip fracture?
A hip fracture is more than a broken bone. If you are older, breaking your hip can affect your mobility. It is highly possible that you need a surgery and it can take a year to recover.
Most hip fractures occurs to elderly people around age 65 or older. If you are in this age group, you need to be careful to avoid falls. Most people fall and break their hip near the upper part of the thighbone (femur). It usually happens near where the thighbone fits into the hip joint.
What causes hip fractures?
Falls. As you get older, your bones naturally will lose strength and more likely to break, even from a minor fall. Children and young adults may also break a hip, it is likely so if they are involve in car accident or sports injury.
Other factors that will increase the risk of breaking your hip:
- Being female
- Family history for having hip fractures at old age
- Poor eating habits
- Not being active
- Smoking
- Taking certain medicines that may lead to bone loss
What are the symptoms of hip fracture?
You will experience severe pain in your hip or lower groin area. You will be unable to walk or weight bearing on your leg.
These symptoms would be most likely happen after a fall. However, if you have very thin bones from osteoporosis, you could break your hip easily even without falling. In rare cases, people may have only thigh or knee pain. They may still be able to walk.
How is a hip fracture diagnosed?
Our orthopaedic specialist will refer you to an X-ray to check the severity of the broken hip. If the orthopaedic specialist suspects that you have a fracture but cannot see it on the X-ray, he may need to refer for an MRI, CT scan or bone scan.
How is hip fracture treated?
Hip fracture usually is treated by hip surgery. Hip surgery usually works well and you will feel the improvement on your hip’s range of movement as time goes by.
The type of hip surgery you need will depend on your severity of your hip fracture. Our orthopaedic specialist may suggest metal screws, a metal plate, or a rod in your hip to reduce the fracture. All or part of the hip replaced may be also suggested.
Our orthopaedic specialist will want you to start moving after the surgery as soon as you can. The more active you are, the faster you will get better.
How can you prevent a hip fracture?
One of the most important things to do to prevent a hip fracture is to prevent osteoporosis. This is a silent disease that can happen to anyone but more common in women due to menopause.
How to prevent osteoporosis for hip fracture?
- Take plenty of calcium and vitamin D.
- Avoid alcohol and avoid smoking.
- Take walks to put pressure on bones and muscles.
- Some people may need to take medicine to slow down osteoporosis.
Hip Fracture Surgeon
