Reply on "Sarcopenia and vertebral fracture"

• Published in: Osteoporosis and Sarcopenia Vol. 4; no. 4; p. 152
• Main Author: Iida, Hiroki
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Korean Society of Osteoporosis 01.12.2018; 대한골다공증학회
• Subjects: 정형외과학
• ISSN: 2405-5255; 2405-5263
• DOI: 10.1016/j.afos.2018.11.087

We appreciate your interest in our paper and your valuable comments. We agree that measurement of muscle function could give us more information of general muscle status, but we could not measure grip strength because patients in this study had difficulty maintaining a stable posture. We agree that most of the cases could be concluded as “osteoporotic fractures.” However, the aim of our study was to investigate the effect of bone density prior to injury on the outcomes. That is the reason why we divided the subjects into “osteoporosis” and “without osteoporosis” groups according to the bone mineral density results. As you mentioned in the letter, there was lack of information about patients enrolled in our study. In our hospital, all patients with vertebral fracture are treated in-hospital. Thus, outpatients were not included in this study. There were exactly 336 patients who could be followed up for 1 year. Unfortunately, we do not have enough data to compare between groups of followed-up and dropped-out. In terms of gender portion, we appreciate your pointing out of dominant male portion of sarcopenia in our study. Besides the social background information, it might be related to the smoking and alcohol habits. As this study did not consider these factors, we could not clearly identify the cause of the large proportion of men with sarcopenia. Alternatively, wemay need to reconsider the appropriateness of diagnostic criteria for sarcopenia. For example, walking speed and grip strength could be also reduced by joint diseases such as arthritis and rheumatism. Therefore, modification of the criteria may be considered for more exact data of sarcopenia. KCI Citation Count: 0