Association of Body Mass Index with Long-Term All-Cause Mortality in Patients Who Had Undergone a Vertebroplasty for a Vertebral Compression Fracture

• Published in: Journal of clinical medicine Vol. 11; no. 21; p. 6519
• Main Authors: Wang, Wen-Chien, Wu, Yun-Che, Lin, Yu-Hsien, Lin, Yu-Tsung, Chen, Kun-Hui, Pan, Chien-Chou, Wang, Jun-Sing, Lee, Cheng-Hung
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 02.11.2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Age; Aging; Body mass index; Bone surgery; Cardiovascular disease; Clinical medicine; Diabetes; Fractures; Hypertension; Kidney diseases; Mortality; Obesity; Osteoporosis; Overweight; Population; vertebral fracture; vertebroplasty; mortality; vertebroplasty; vertebral fracture; body mass index
• ISSN: 2077-0383; 2077-0383
• DOI: 10.3390/jcm11216519

We aimed to investigate the association between preoperative body mass index (BMI) and postoperative long-term mortality in patients who underwent a vertebroplasty. We retrospectively enrolled patients with a vertebral compression fracture who underwent a vertebroplasty between May 2013 and June 2020 in a medical center in Taiwan. The survival status of the study sample was confirmed by the end of March 2021. Cox-proportional hazard models were conducted to examine the effects of being overweight/obese (≥25 kg/m2 vs. <25 kg/m2) and BMI (as a continuous variable) on all-cause mortality after adjusting for age, sex, history of smoking, diabetes, hypertension, chronic kidney disease, and osteoporosis. A total of 164 patients were analyzed (mean age 75.8 ± 9.3 years, male 25.6%, mean BMI 24.0 ± 4.1 kg/m2) after a median follow-up of 785 days. Compared with a BMI < 25 kg/m2, a BMI ≥ 25 kg/m2 was associated with a significantly lower risk of all-cause mortality (HR 0.297, 95% CI 0.101 to 0.878, p = 0.028). These findings were consistent when BMI was examined as a continuous variable (HR 0.874, 95% CI 0.773 to 0.988, p = 0.031). A low BMI (<22 kg/m2) should be considered as a risk factor for postoperative long-term mortality in this ageing population.