Fracture Risk Assessment Tool is a free, online fracture risk calculator which can be used to predict 10-year fracture risk for women and men over age 50 years. It incorporates seven clinical risk factors and bone density to give a 10-year risk of major osteoporotic fracture and hip fracture. This dynamic tool can be used with patients at the bedside to help guide treatment decisions. There are some limitations to Fracture Risk Assessment Tool, with the most central limitation being the fact that inputs are binary. Much research has been done to try to refine Fracture Risk Assessment Tool to allow for more accurate risk prediction, and this article describes the data for adjusting Fracture Risk Assessment Tool depending on the clinical scenario such as the dose of glucocorticoid use, presence of diabetes and others. Recently, the new FRAXplus tool has been developed to address many of these concerns and will likely replace the old Fracture Risk Assessment Tool in the future. At the current time, it is available in beta form.
Keywords: FRAXplus; Fracture Risk Assessment Tool; fracture risk assessment; osteoporosis.
Methods for Refining the FRAX® Tool in Patients with Low Bone Density to Help Improve the Accuracy of Osteoporotic Fracture Risk PredictionMany patients who have low bone density develop fragility fractures, even those whose bone density is not yet within the osteoporosis range. Thus, in patients with low bone density, the health care team should estimate the risk of fracture to decide which patients should take medications to prevent fractures. Factors such as age, body mass index, steroid use, family history and other clinical factors can influence the fracture risk, in addition to bone density. There is an online calculator called the Fracture Risk Assessment Tool (FRAX®) which allows patients and doctors to integrate these risk factors with bone density in order to estimate the 10 year risk of osteoporotic fractures. FRAX® asks a series of yes/no questions about the patient’s risks for fracture, and also takes into account the patient’s country of residence, age, gender, race and bone density at the femur neck. However, there are some important limitations of this calculator. For example, we think that steroid medications increase the risk of fractures, and the higher the dose, the higher the risk of fractures. However, FRAX® only allows a “yes” or “no” input to the steroid use question. This paper aims to descibe methods for refining the FRAX® calculation to make the fracture risk prediction more accurate. For example, it describes a mathematical adjustment to FRAX® to account for the dose of steroids used. It also reviews methods for FRAX® adjustment for diabetes type 1 and 2, and severity of rheumatoid arthritis, among other considerations. Importantly, there is a new FRAX® tool that is currently in beta testing which will also further refine the accuracy of fracture risk prediction.