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Identification of Probable sarcopenia based on SARC-F and SARC-CalF in older adults from a low-resource setting
Claudia L Vidal-Cuellar1,2, Guiliana Mas1,2, Pamela Ayamamani-Torres2
1Gerontology Institute, Cayetano Heredia University, Lima, Peru.
Objectives:
We aimed to investigate the frequency of probable sarcopenia and to compare the performance of SARC-F and SARC-CalF for detecting this condition in outpatient older adults from a low-resource setting.
Methods:
We conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional study in outpatient older adults aged ≥60 years attending a hospital in Peru, between August 2019 and February 2020. Probable sarcopenia was defined as low handgrip strength (<27 kg in men and <16 in women). We used SARC-F and SARC-CalF with their standard cut-off points (≥4 and ≥11, respectively). Low calf circumference was defined as ≤33 cm in women and ≤34 cm in men. We performed sensitivity and specificity analyses.
Results:
We included 206 older adults, 102 (49.5%) aged ≥75 years old and 140 (67.9%) females. Probable sarcopenia was present in 36.40% of the participants. SARC-F ≥4 was observed in 29.61% and SARC-CalF ≥11 in 41.26% of the population. SARC-F≥4 showed 41.33% sensitivity and 77.10% specificity, whereas SARC-Calf ≥11 had 50.67% sensitivity and 64.12% specificity.
Conclusion:
We found that one out of three of the population had probable sarcopenia. SARC-Calf showed superior but still low sensitivity than SARC-F, while both had moderate specificity and thus may be useful for ruling out the disease in clinical practice.
