Beware! This disease is known as the "invisible killer"! The mortality rate within 4 years is nearly 50%!

Fractures caused by osteoporosis are called the "invisible killer" of the elderly. Osteoporosis can cause vertebral fractures when you are old. Many people mistakenly think they are other diseases and delay treatment. Similar cases often occur.

It is reported that there are about 1.81 million new osteoporotic vertebral fracture patients in China each year, most of whom are elderly patients, with a mortality rate of 49.4% within 4 years. If open surgery is used to treat vertebral fractures, it will cause great trauma and high complication rate, which used to be a difficult problem in orthopedic surgery. How to solve this problem?

One day, an 87-year-old woman came to the orthopedic clinic of the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University. She had been suffering from back pain and cough for more than a year. She had previously thought it was pneumonia, but the medicine did not help.

Through the X-ray, Yang Huilin, director of the Department of Orthopedics, saw that it was a vertebral fracture caused by osteoporosis, but the family did not even know that the old man had ever had a fracture.

Yang Huilin calls fractures caused by osteoporosis the "invisible killer" of the elderly. Osteoporosis can cause vertebral fractures when one is old. Many people mistakenly think they are other diseases and delay treatment. Similar cases often occur in Yang Huilin's clinic.

He told reporters that there are about 1.81 million new patients with osteoporotic vertebral fractures in China every year, most of whom are elderly patients, and the mortality rate within four years is as high as 49.4%.

Treatment of vertebral fractures, if done with open surgery, is a major problem in orthopedic surgery, as it is traumatic and has a high incidence of complications. As early as 2000, Yang Huilin, in sync with the international community, developed minimally invasive kyphoplasty to treat osteoporotic vertebral fractures. Simply put, it involves injecting bone cement into the vertebral body.

One day, they were performing a vertebral fracture repair surgery on a 96-year-old man. They were injecting bone cement into the spine. If the cement leaked, it could cause spinal cord injury or pulmonary embolism. In severe cases, it could lead to paralysis or even death of the patient.

Surgery requires accurate and safe positioning with fluoroscopy. For more than a decade, Yang Huilin and his team have worn lead suits and dealt with radiation for a long time, conducting in-depth research on minimally invasive treatment of osteoporotic vertebral fractures, and cleverly solved this problem using pressure sensors.

Through sensors and contrast aids, the fracture site was accurately found and bone cement was injected. In less than two hours, the operation was completed and the wound on the old man's back was only the size of a charging cable.

In 2017, Yang Huilin's team won the second prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award for the establishment and application of a minimally invasive treatment system for osteoporotic vertebral fractures.

The First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University has won four National Science and Technology Progress Awards in succession from 2016 to 2021. The reporter learned that the hospital has always focused on investment in basic science and clinical application transformation. For example, in 2020, the hospital invested nearly 100 million yuan in various scientific research projects at all levels.

Source: CCTV Finance