Introduction:

compliance to anti-osteoporotic treatment is essential for the effectiveness of medications in clinical practice and is a priority objective for fracture liaison services (FLS).

Objectives:

to describe the follow-up and compliance to treatment of patients assisted by our FLS and identify the reasons for follow-up discontinuation.

Material and methods:

this is a descriptive, retrospective, and cross-sectional study of patients aged > 50 years with osteoporotic fractures treated in an FLS from 2016 through 2020. A descriptive statistical analysis of the variables collected was conducted using the SPSS software.

Results:

the sample included 1280 patients; 86.2 % were women and 13.8 % were men, 26.7 % of whom had received prior anti-osteoporotic treatment. After inclusion in the FLS, there was an increase of 59.6 % in patients who were started on anti-osteoporotic treatment and a 42.6 % increase in supplementation. A total of 4 different follow-up visits were conducted (at 5.4 months, 14.5 months, 24.3 months, and 33.8 months) with good compliance to treatment at around 72.1 %, 80.6 %, 83.1 %, and 83.7 %, respectively, and compliance to supplements at around 90.1 %, 90 %, 88.2 %, and 87.1 %, respectively. The reasons for follow-up discontinuation were completion of the follow-up program (21.48 %), death (11.02 %), transfer of follow-up to primary care (9.53 %), patient's decision (6.48 %), medical decision (3.83 %), treatment not indicated (3.13 %), and inability to continue follow-up (2.73 %).

Conclusions:

the inclusion of these patients in an FLS shows a high percentage of good compliance and improves the percentage of patients with osteoporotic fractures who are started on treatment. The most common reason for follow-up discontinuation was continuation of care by primary care physicians.

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