Evaluation of Clinical Decision Rules for Bone Mineral Density Testing among White Women

Background. Osteoporosis is a devastating, insidious disease that causes skeletal fragility. Half of women will suffer osteoporotic fractures during their lifetimes. Many fractures occur needlessly, because of inattentiveness to assessment, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of osteoporosis. Study Purpose. Study Purpose. To evaluate the discriminatory performance of clinical decision rules to determine the need to undergo bone mineral density testing. Methods. A nationally representative sample from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey consisted of 14,060 subjects who completed surveys, physical examinations, laboratory tests, and bone mineral density exams. Multivariable linear regression tested the correlation of covariates that composed the clinical decision rules with bone mineral density. Results. Increased age and decreased weight were variables in the final regression models for each gender and race/ethnicity. Among the indices, the Osteoporosis Self-Assessment Tool, which is composed of age and weight, performed best for White women. Study Implications. These results have implications for the prevention, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of osteoporosis. The Osteoporosis Self-Assessment Tool performed best and is inexpensive and the least time consuming to implement.