Drug treatments that reduce fracture rate are underused after vertebral fractures

EDITOR—We recently undertook a cost analysis of osteoporosis, which showed that the disease is probably more costly than earlier estimates quoted by Pal suggested.1 We estimated that the total annual cost of fractures in a United Kingdom population is around £940 million, with hip fractures costing roughly £12 000 each.2 More importantly, using data from the general practice research database, like Pal we found little evidence that patients who had sustained a fracture were being offered treatment.3 The table (taken from our paper) summarises our results.