Life expectancy in osteogenesis imperfecta: Fig 1

No information is available on life expectancy in osteogenesis imperfecta; it is often assumed that this is impaired. In a recent review this is described as a severe disease in which “some patients reach adulthood.”1 We were stimulated by requests for information for a patient told by an insurer that compensation would be reduced because of “poor life expectancy,” and for an affected child who wished to claim from her father's estate. We sought to obtain reliable figures for life expectancy from our large survey of patients with osteogenesis imperfecta.2 We limited our survey to patients in England and Wales. Patients were excluded if they could not, with confidence, be assigned to one of the Sillence types,3 or if they had the perinatal lethal form (type II). Patients identified …