Treatable and untreatable risk factors for hip fracture.

Treatable risk factors for hip fracture, such as impaired visual acuity or low bone mass, are useful guides to interventions that can substantially reduce an individual's risk of hip fracture. Programs to treat risk factors in populations will have a limited impact on the rates of hip fracture if prevalence of the risk factor is relatively low or the intervention reaches and changes the risk factors of a limited proportion of the population. Even untreatable risk factors, such as a maternal history of a hip fracture, can be useful in making treatment decisions, because they identify women who are likely to derive more benefit from drugs that maintain or increase bone mass.