Bone Abstracts

Background: WHO recommends diagnostic criteria of osteoporosis can be based on double energy absorption of x-ray bone densitometry (DXA), but the DXA method has some limitations such as relatively higher cost, relatively longer detection time, inconvenience in equipment transportation and so on. Quantitative Ultrasound (QUS) method has the potential to diagnose osteoporosis and it is convenient to carry around and low-cost. Asian osteoporosis self-assessment tool (OSTA) is an easy and effective way to evaluate Asian people’s osteoporosis. Neither OSTA nor QUS can solely achieve the desired sensitivity and specificity when screening the osteoporosis, but it is a feasilble way to combine both methods.

Method: From September 2014 to December 2014, BMD of 118 postmenopausal women was measured in Guangzhou communities by QUS, and relative information such as their ages and BMI are required through questionnaire. Patients also went through lumbar dual-energy x-ray scans. DXA results is taken as the gold standard of osteoporosis diagnosis; by drawing ROC curve, this research evaluates the feasibility of joine use of QUS and OSTA score in osteoporosis screening, and determine the appropriate diagnosis point.

Results: When combined use of OSTA and QUS for screening, the regression curve was fitted as Y=−1.688*QUS−0.186*OSTA−3.973. Y was considered to be a predicted value. Meanwhile, the AUC of ROC draw by predicted value and DXA screening result is 0.847, SE=0.041, P<0.0001. AUC=0.847, SE=0.041, P<0.0001. When parallelly use of QUS-T and OSTA, the diagostic point set by OSTA≤-3 and QUS-T≤-2.2 can achieve youden index as 0.63, while sensitivity is 89% and specificity is 74%.

Conclusion: Quantitative Ultrasound (QUS) and OSTA score is a simple and economic method of predicting the incidence of osteoporosis among the elderly. By setting the QUS and OSTA threshold can effectively screen osteoporosis in patients at high risk.