Increased Incidence of Hip Fractures in Dialysis Patients with Low Serum Parathyroid Hormone

To study the complications of renal osteodystrophy in patients with end-stage renal disease, we reviewed the incidence of hip fractures in our outpatient dialysis population from 1988 to 1998. One thousand two hundred seventy-two patients were treated for a total of 4,039 patient-years; 56 hip fractures were documented during this period. The incidence of hip fractures was many times greater in the dialysis patients than in the general population in each of the age-, race-, and sex-matched subgroups. The 1-year mortality rate from the hip fracture event was nearly two and a half times greater in the dialysis patients compared with the general population. The incidence of hip fractures in the first half of the decade was similar to that observed in the second half. When parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels were evaluated, we determined that patients with lower serum PTH levels were more likely to sustain a hip fracture than patients with higher PTH levels (P: < 0.006). In addition, we determined that patients with lower PTH levels had an earlier mortality than patients with higher PTH levels (P: < 0.03). We conclude that despite more aggressive therapy directed toward bone health in our dialysis patients in recent years, the incidence of hip fractures and their devastating morbidity and mortality remained unchanged over the past decade. Lower PTH levels may predispose to earlier mortality.