Should You Get a Bone Density... Video Transcript

Participants

, Shawn Biggers MD, Flavia Golden MD

Summary

Osteoporosis has long been a concern for any woman approaching her senior years, but until recent recent years there were few treatment options. Now that medical advances have opened up a broad array of treatment strategies, testing for osteoporosis — bone density testing — has become a greater imperative for women at risk. Join our panel of experts as they discuss this test and how it can help you.

Webcast Transcript

CHERYL WILLS: After the age of 35, women lose bone mass at the rate of about 1% a year, a rate that doubles or even quadruples for some women right after menopause. In many cases, it can lead to osteoporosis. During this webcast, we're going to talk about bone density tests and their importance.

Joining me today to discuss this topic, is Dr. Flavia Golden. She's Assistant Professor of Medicine at Cornell University Medical College. She's Assistant Attending at New York Hospital, and an internist who works at the Center for Women's Health Care at New York Hospital. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Golden.

Also joining us is Dr. Shawn Biggers. She's Assistant Professor in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Weil Medical College of Cornell University. She is also Director of Obstetrics at Cornell Medical Associates, West Side. Thank you, Dr. Biggers, for joining us today.

Let's start with the basics. What is a bone density test, Dr. Biggers?

SHAWN BIGGERS, MD: A bone density test is a special x-ray that's used to evaluate the density of bone. There are things that we can compare it to, a group of normals, which can determine whether a patient is at risk for what we call osteoporosis. There are certain measurements that determine whether the bone density is low or normal, and the do compare this to a group of 20-35-year-old women.

CHERYL WILLS: Let's talk briefly about osteoporosis. What is osteoporosis?

SHAWN BIGGERS, MD: Osteoporosis is essentially weak, thin bones. Basically, since it's mostly women, though not only women, that are affected by osteoporosis, osteoporosis is generally defined as a certain amount of bone loss that a person might have, to the point at which they actually are what we call "below the fracture rate." Meaning that their bones have gotten so brittle from bone loss over time, that they are at much higher risk for fracturing a bone just after very simple sort of, after very light bone trauma. In other words, a fall. Falling on your hand, falling on your hip, could actually result in a bone fracture. Osteoporosis is defined as a person's bone being a couple of degrees below what we would expect the peak woman's, a woman at her peak bone mass, to have. A woman's peak bone mass is around age 29-30.

CHERYL WILLS: Before we get on to how a bone density test works, who should get it, who's at risk for osteoporosis, Dr. Biggers?

SHAWN BIGGERS, MD: The typical at-risk patient is a woman who is in the perimenopause, and usually the first several years after menopause is a time where she may be losing bone at a higher rate than she is building bone. These are two activities that are constantly occurring in the bone.

For women who are younger, they are still losing bone. We actually recommend a variety of things to try to prevent this, including increased calcium intake, etc. There are some risk factors in women before menopause, that may put them at some level of increased risk for osteoporosis.

If a woman has been on steroids for some chronic disease for a long period of time, that may put her at risk. If she has had some issues with her menstrual cycle, and has a long period of time where she has not had high levels of estrogen. This is something that her gynecologist would have evaluated in her. She may also be at increased risk for developing osteoporosis to a severe level at an early age.

This often can happen to thin women who are not having normal menstrual cycles, and sometimes to certain athletes who, for whatever reason, may have very low estrogens due to low body fat. These are people who are at some level of increased risk.

CHERYL WILLS: Dr.