Bone Abstracts

Introduction: Osteoporosis is a major bone disease among postmenopausal women. Measurement of BMD in the spine and hip is used as gold standard for the diagnosis of osteoporosis. ISCD recommended that posteroanterior L1-4 as the spine region of interest for BMD measurement. However, both L1-4 and L2-4 are used in the clinical and epidemiological studies. The aim of our study was to evaluate whether the differences of BMD between L1-4 and L2-4 would exist.

Method: We reviewed the results of spine BMD measurement by DXA from patients admitted to Our Hospital between 2013 and 2014. The bone mineral density of lumbar, (L1-4, L2-4) femoral neck and hip bones were measured in 4903 females over 44 years old. Patient consent was waived by the institutional review board of our hospital.

Results: In all groups, bone mineral density and T-score of lumbar vertebrae were existed significant differences P<0.05. What’s more, L1-4 were lower than L2-4 counterparts. With age, bone mineral density and T-score of lumbar showed bone mass decreased before 70 years while hip showed in all groups. The largest degree were declined in 50–55 group and there were no obvious differences between L1-4 and L2-4. After 70 years, there were some rebound in lumbar bone mineral density and T-score, expecially L2-4.

Conclusions: We found that skeletal sites spinal degenerative joint diseases DJD and abdominal aortic calcification have influenced the lumbar results of DXA measurement. Identifying these differences may help to diagnose osteoporosis correctly.