Wrist bone mineral density utility in diagnosing hip osteoporosis in postmenopausal women

Osteoporosis is a common bone disease that increases with age. Wrist bone mineral density (BMD) has significant correlation with other skeletal sites and it could be used as a diagnostic method for osteoporosis. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the role of wrist BMD in diagnosing osteoporosis in postmenopausal women.

In this cross-sectional study, 99 postmenopausal women with mean age of 57 ± 6.9 (range 50-76) years were evaluated. BMD of nondominant wrist, lumbar spine (L2-L4) and femur bone using a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) device as well as lateral lumbosacral X-ray for degenerative joint disease (DJD) evaluation were measured. Mean T-score of wrist was lower than hip and lumbar area.

Osteopenia and osteoporosis were observed in 40.4% and 59.6% in the wrist, 38.4% and 24.2% in the hip and 36.4% and 49.5% in lumbar-spine BMD measurements, respectively. There was positive correlation between wrist BMD with hip BMD (r = 0.468,p < 0.001) and lumbar BMD (r = 0.322, p = 0.001). DJD due to lumbosacral X-ray was reported in 84 cases (84.8%) including mild DJD in 45 (53.5%), moderate DJD in 33 (39.3%) and severe DJD in 6 (7.2%).

Our results showed that wrist BMD has better accuracy than lumbar BMD in diagnosing osteoporosis in postmenopausal women.