Drop the densitometry

Professor Les Irwig and colleagues from the Screening and Test Evaluation Program at the School of Public Health, University of Sydney said their findings support a recommendation against routine monitoring in the first three years after potent bisphosphonate therapy is started. Australian guidelines recommend at least two-yearly DEXA assessment of bone mineral density in postmenopausal women. The research, published online first in the BMJ, analysed data from the Fracture Intervention Trial that included more than 6,000 postmenopausal women treated with alendronate or placebo for three years. The researchers found that almost all (97.5%) of those treated with alendronate showed at least a "modest" increase in their bone mineral density and this effect did not vary significantly between individuals....