Dr. Siris shares why bloods tests are necessary when evaluating bone health.
Dr. Siris:
When a doctor talks to you about your risk for osteoporosis it’s very important that other medical conditions that may cause osteoporosis and laboratory abnormalities which may be a tip off that there are problems, be reviewed. Finally drugs such as Prednisone, Cortisone that you may need for a medical condition have problems for bones, as do some of the other drugs we use.
For example, if a woman has breast cancer and she takes a drug called an aromatase inhibitor, very, very good drugs for protecting you against breast cancer, those have an effect on bones. So your doctor needs to do pretty standardized blood test just to make sure there isn’t some other medical condition going on that might be affecting your bone health, talk to you about other medical conditions that you have and look at the list of medicines that you take, to make sure that nothing is being missed that might be an important factor in what’s going to happen to your bones.
About Dr. Ethel Siris, M.D.:
Dr. Ethel S. Siris is the Director at the Toni Stabile Osteoporosis Center, Columbia University, is the Madeline C. Stabile Professor of Medicine at Columbia University, and is the immediate past-President for the National Osteoporosis Foundation. She is board certified in endocrinology and internal medicine, focusing on osteoporosis, metabolic bone disease, and bone and mineral metabolism.
Visit Dr. Siris at New York-Presbyterian Hospital