The importance of severity of arthrosis for the reliability of bone mineral density measurement in women

The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of the severity of degenerative changes on measurements of A-P lumbar spines BMD values and to determine the reliability of DEXA measurements associated with severity of the disease on A-P lumbar spines BMD values using DEXA. The measurements using DEXA were taken from L2–L4 spines and femoral neck of total 271 female cases. One hundred and ten of them had mild arthrosis (Group 0), and 69 had severe arthrosis (Group 1). Ninety-two cases without arthrosis were chosen as control group (Group 2). The cases with arthrosic changes were grouped according to their degree of severity of arthrosis. The groups were compared two by two and Tukey multiple comparison test was used for the analysis of the difference of the means of the groups. The mean age of cases was 61.79, 61.84, and 60.47, respectively. The average height was 157.26, 155.93, and 15.92 cm while the average weight was 69.21, 70.78, and 71.45 kg, respectively. The mean body mass index (BMI) was 0.00283, 0.00291, and 0.00293, respectively. L2–L4 A-P spinal BMD values were 0.9870, 0.9848, and 1.0836 g/cm² while the femoral neck BMD values were 0.7964, 0.8056, and 0.8223 g/cm², respectively. There was no statistical significance between study and control groups in terms of age, weight, height, BMI, and BMD values obtained from femoral neck. However, lumbar region BMD values of the cases with severe arthrosis were statistically significantly high when compared with other two groups. The femoral neck measurement is the prominent alternative method in severe arthrosis while taking measurements from lumbar region is still the most appropriate method in cases with mild arthrosis without having giant osteophytes.