Medicina (Nov 2022)

Utilizing Graphical Analysis of Chest Radiographs for Primary Screening of Osteoporosis

  • Soichiro Saeki,
  • Kouichi Yamamoto,
  • Rie Tomizawa,
  • Szilvia Meszaros,
  • Csaba Horvath,
  • Luca Zoldi,
  • Helga Szabo,
  • Adam Domonkos Tarnoki,
  • David Laszlo Tarnoki,
  • Takayuki Ishida,
  • Chika Honda

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/medicina58121765
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 58, no. 12
p. 1765

Abstract

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Background and Objectives: Osteoporosis is a major risk of fractures, harming patients’ quality of life. Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), which can detect osteoporosis early, is too expensive to be conducted on a regular basis. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate a screening method using chest radiographs developed in Japan applied to another population. Materials and Methods: Fifty-five patients who had a chest radiograph and DXA and applied within three months of each test were recruited from the patient database of Semmelweis University (Budapest, Hungary). Graphical analysis of the chest radiographs was conducted to identify the ratio of the cortical bone in the clavicle of each patient. Two researchers performed the analysis, and multiple regression was conducted to determine the bone mineral density of each patient provided by DXA. Results: The Pearson correlation between two examiners’ determinations of the cortical bone ratio was 0.769 (p Conclusions: This simple, economic Japanese graphical analysis method for chest radiographs may be feasible in detecting osteoporosis. Further studies with a larger population of patients with greater variety of ethnicity would be of value in improving the accuracy of this model.

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