Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

There is an important therapeutic gap in the management of osteoporosis-related fractures. A plethora of initiatives have been undertaken to close the care gap, which resulted in the study of several types of secondary fracture prevention programs. Apart from evidence on the effectiveness of such services, their economic impact has also been the subject of published studies. Findings have shown that the highest benefit in terms of investigation and treatment is obtained with a high-intensity intervention, which was also found to be either cost-saving or cost-effective. However, my doctoral research hypothesis is that there are different behaviours towards compliance to care in such programs. Thus, we identified predicted groups of care trajectories in a cohort of fragility fracture patients systematically followed in a high-intensity secondary fracture prevention program. Thereafter, we evaluated the relationship between costs and benefits in terms of quantity and quality of life of these trajectory groups compared to usual clinical practice.