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Low-trauma knee fractures in older Finnish women between 1970 and 2013

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Abstract

Background

Fresh information on various low-trauma fractures of elderly adults is sparse.

Aim

We aimed to assess the current trends in the low-trauma knee fractures among older adults in Finland, an EU country with a well-defined white population of 5.4 million.

Methods

The rates of elderly Finns’ low-trauma fractures of the knee (distal femur, patella, and proximal tibia) were assessed by taking into account 60-year-old or older persons who were admitted to Finnish hospitals for primary treatment of such injury in 1970–2013.

Results

The incidence of low-trauma knee fractures among 60-year-old or older Finnish women sharply rose between 1970 and 1997, from 55 fractures (per 100,000 persons) in 1970 to 124 fractures in 1997. Thereafter, the incidence continuously declined so that the fracture incidence was 91 in 2013. The corresponding age-adjusted fracture incidences were 60 (1970), 119 (1997), and 83 (2013). In older men, the fracture incidence was rather steady over time: the age-adjusted incidence was 30 in 1970 vs. 28 in 2013.

Conclusions

The rise in the incidence of low-trauma knee fractures in Finnish older women from early 1970s until late 1990s has been followed by a continuous decline in the fracture rate. Reasons for the decline are unknown, but a cohort effect toward a healthier aging female population with improved functionality and decreased risk of injurious slips, trips, and falls could partly explain the observation.

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Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by the Competitive State Research Financing of the Expert Responsibility Area of Tampere University Hospital, Tampere, Finland (Grant 9S018), and the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, Helsinki, Finland.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Injury and Osteoporosis Research Center, UKK Institute for Health Promotion Research, P.O. Box 30, 33501, Tampere, Finland

    Pekka Kannus, Seppo Niemi & Harri Sievänen

  2. Medical School, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

    Pekka Kannus

  3. Department of Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery, Tampere University Hospital, Tampere, Finland

    Pekka Kannus

  4. Tampere Research Center of Sports Medicine, UKK Institute for Health Promotion Research, Tampere, Finland

    Jari Parkkari

Authors
  1. Pekka Kannus
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  2. Jari Parkkari
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  3. Seppo Niemi
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  4. Harri Sievänen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pekka Kannus.

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Conflict of interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

The study was fully compliant with the ethical standards of medical research.

Statement of human and animal rights

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed consent

As a register-based blinded analysis, the study did not have identifiable individual participants and thus informed consent was not obtained.

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Kannus, P., Parkkari, J., Niemi, S. et al. Low-trauma knee fractures in older Finnish women between 1970 and 2013. Aging Clin Exp Res 28, 665–668 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-015-0457-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-015-0457-6

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