[Osteopenia--comments on the concept of osteoporosis]

On the basis of instances the problems of the simultaneous use of the notion of osteoporosis for a clinical picture of a disease and a roentgen-morphological symptom is discussed. The described errors of diagnostics avail themselves of the introduction of the notion of osteopenia as initial findings which then further must be differentiated into the defined clinical pictures of osteomalacia, fibroosteoclasia and into the so-called syndrome of osteoporosis. In the nomenclature proposed the radiologists have the main responsibility, since instead of osteoporosis as X-ray-morphological symptom they must propose the clinician the osteopenia with sings for an adequate clinical picture and so compel the clinician to perform the differential diagnosis of demineralisation of the bone as far as possible.