Feeling old in your bones? Your skeletal age may be the reason

In a previous blog, I discussed the implication of communicating mortality risk to patients with a fracture. In this article, we put forward the new concept of “skeletal age” to quantify the impact of fracture on mortality.

It is easy to determine the chronological age of an individual. The number of years that pass from the date of birth (elapsed time) is chronological age. However, for practical health purposes, the age of our body is more informative than our chronological age. In engineering, the idea of ‘effective age’ is used to assess the age of a structure based on its current condition rather than its chronological age.

In medical application, for the sake of illustration, we can start with the idea of ‘heart age’. We know that being overweight is a risk factor for cardiovascular mortality, and the heart age of an individual is determined by the presence of excess weight. For example, a 65-year old man may have a ‘heart age’ of 70 (according to this UK calculator), because the man has a body mass index of 26 kg/m2 which places him in the ‘overweight’ category. Knowing his heart age helps the man take preventive measures to mitigate his risk of cardiovascular mortality.

In the same way, the idea of ‘skeletal age‘ is quite relevant in osteoporosis. Skeletal age is defined as the age of our skeleton as a consequence of fracture or exposure to risk factors for fracture. Therefore, if an individual’s skeletal age is greater than their chronological…