Approaches to educate and inform patients about osteoporosis (medications)

Despite an increasing burden, osteoporosis remains largely underdiagnosed and undertreated, while adherence to osteoporosis medications is poor and suboptimal. Many factors could explain the poor diagnosis and adherence to treatment including misconception or poor knowledge about osteoporosis and the lack of perceived benefits of treatment. Educating patients and helping them in the decision to take a treatment could certainly be useful to compete these factors. In this paper, we reviewed and discussed approaches that have been used to educate and inform patients about osteoporosis (medications) and to facilitate shared decision-making. We identified a variety of education programs from brochures to more sophisticated programs as well as several tools to facilitate shared-decision making (e.g. decision aids), with positive but some contrasting results. Further investigation of education programmes within the context of well-conducted randomized controlled trials with longer follow-up periods would be needed. Providing patients with good quality information about osteoporosis and treatment options is needed as a crucial step to increase the diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis.