Purpose
It is well known that vertebral fractures (VFs) are the hallmark and the most common fractures related to osteoporosis.
PrevalentVFs are associated with impaired quality of life,
increased morbidity,
mortality and social and health costs.
VFs affect more than 50% of individuals over 80 years old in US and 12% over 50 years old in Europe,
among males and females.
The detection of VFs strongly predicts future fracture risk independently from bone density criteria.
Despite clinical implication of VFs incidence,
less than one third of...
Methods and Materials
Three musculoskeletal radiologists retrospectively and randomly analyzed 100 CT and 100 MR examinations of the thoracic and/or lumbar spine.
A semiquantitative approach was used as described by Genant et al.: a vertebral deformity more than 20% of loss in height with a reduction in area of more than 10–20% was defined as a fracture; to grade the severity of VFs was also used the corresponding four-grade scoring system: no fracture (grade 0); mild fracture (grade 1,
reduction in vertebral height of 20–25% compared with adjacent...
Results
Four hundred thirty-two vertebrae were considered in CT,
680 vertebrae in MRI.
Nineteen out of 432 (4.4%) VFs were identified in 16/100 (16.0%) patients submitted to CT (Fig. 4,
Fig. 5).
Twenty-six of 680 (3.8%) VFs were detectedin 14/100 (14.0%) patients who underwent MRI (Fig. 6).
In the detection of VFs,
sensitivity and specificity were respectively 100% and 99.0% for sCT and both 100% for MR-loc.
Accuracy was excellent (AUC=0.995±0.003 for sCT; 1.000 for MR-loc),
as well as inter-observer agreement (k=0.893±0.028 for sCT; 0.884±0.027 for...
Conclusion
sCT and MRI-loc are simple but accurate methods in the detection of VFs.
More consideration of such ancillary imaging sequences would be desirable by radiologists,
even when exams are performed for other diagnostic purpose.
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