Table 1.

Proposed operational definitions of osteoporotic fractures.

Component (s)	Definition	Methodology	Reference
Age	Most fractures in people aged more than 50 years are the result of osteoporosis	Expert opinion	[18]
Site	"Major" fractures linked to mortality in population-based studies: hip, vertebrae, pelvis, distal femur, proximal tibia, multiple ribs and proximal humerus	Prospective cohort study, Expert consensus based on literature search	[8] [46]
Mechanism	Fracture caused by injury that would be insufficient to fracture normal bone, i.e. fracture that occurs as a result of minimal trauma (low-energy trauma), such as a fall from standing height or less, or no identifiable trauma.	Expert consensus	[47]
Bone mineral density (BMD)	BMD value 2.5 standard deviation s(SD) or more below the mean for a young normal population of same sex and race (T-score), at the lumbar, hip or radius site	WHO report based on fracture risk assessment	[48]
Age, site, bone mineral density	Fractures occurring at a site associated with low BMD and which also increased in incidence after the age of 50 years	10-year fracture probability calculated from a large cohort	[21]
Age, sex, race, site	Differential probabilities of attribution to osteoporosis according to the combination of several variables	Expert consensus by the Delphi method	[26]