Importance of osteoporosis screening in the perimenopausal age

The level of awareness of Saudi perimenopausal women regarding the importance of osteoporosis screening should be determined, and obstacles that prevent/delay them from doing so should be identified.

This was a national-level cross-sectional study conducted during the months of September and October 2021. A total of 1716 respondents were women, after men and any woman younger than 40 years were excluded.

Participants' awareness was identified by five questions, dividing the cohort into three groups. Only 22 (1.3%) participants were completely aware, 12 (0.7%) participants had no idea about screening, and the remaining 1682 (98%) participants were partially aware. The aware group was significantly associated with only being older and already diagnosed with osteoporosis (p < 0.001). The obstacles that prevented participants from performing screening were significantly associated with a lack of doctor advice and requests (p < 0.001) and with participants being worried about other diseases (p < 0.001), age (p < 0.001), level of education (p = 0.013) and monthly income (p < 0.001).

Although osteoporosis is a preventable disease, unfortunately, only 22 (1.3%) participants were fully aware of the importance of osteoporosis screening. Therefore, more efforts are needed from all doctors dealing with perimenopausal women to discuss and screen them.