Hong Kong launches pharmacist-led osteoporosis screening program

The institution’s Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine on Thursday launched the city’s first community pharmacist-led osteoporosis screening programme.

The scheme uses a screening algorithm that allows pharmacists to identify high-risk patients during routine visits and refer them to family doctors for bone density scans and diagnosis.

Osteoporosis affects about 30 per cent of women and 8 per cent of men aged 50 and older in Hong Kong. But up to 80 per cent of cases go undiagnosed and untreated because the disease is asymptomatic until a fracture occurs.

Fewer than one in 10 at-risk individuals proactively seek bone density screening.

The one-year mortality rate following a hip fracture exceeds that of prostate and breast cancer, while local hospital data shows that nearly half of hip fracture patients do not survive beyond five years.

“The high death toll is driven less by the fracture itself than by complications from prolonged immobility and bed rest, chiefly pneumonia and other infections that claim elderly patients in the months after injury,” said Dr Cheung Ching-lung, an associate professor at the university’s pharmacology and pharmacy department.