Eva Mayr-Stihl Foundation supports osteoporosis prevention

Owing to the change in demographics, the renowned German casualty surgeon Prof. Ulrich Liener from the Stuttgart Marienhospital has less to do with the consequences of car accidents these days than with age-related bone fractures. Therefore, he and his team want to set up a separate osteological center in the clinic for orthopedics and casualty surgery which addresses the cause of age-related bone fractures, i.e. osteoporosis “One of the main activities of our clinic is the treatment of elderly patients. We are the only casualty clinic in Baden-Württemberg in which a geriatric physician is permanent member of the medical team”, explained Liener. “If an elderly person stumbles and breaks a bone, helping them is not just a matter of restoring the bone’s function. If he or she suffers from brittle bones (osteoporosis), one must try to avoid another fracture occurring a little while later.” 

Osteoporosis is gradually becoming one of the most common medical disorders. There are almost eight million sufferers in Germany alone. Apart from age-related bone degeneration, i.e. osteoporosis, other illnesses – cancer, for example – can result in brittle bones. Liener is therefore planning to set up an interdisciplinary bone center:  “Our new center will work together with other specialist clinics in our organization to detect correlations in every patient affected so that not only the symptom of a broken bone is cured, but the cause is treated too.”

The Eva Mayr-Stihl Foundation supports the new bone center with the acquisition of a €35,000 Dual X-Ray Absorptiometry (DXA) for more accurate measurement of bone density