Epidemiology of hip fractures.

Hip fractures are the most serious osteoporotic fracture at both an individual and population level. In the United States alone there are over 250,000 hip fractures each year (1), costing at least 5.4 billion dollars annually (2). About 20 percent of persons who fracture their hip are dead within a year (3, 4) and, of the survivors, many never regain their prefracture level of physical function (5, 6).