Screening post-menopausal women for bone mineral level by bioelectrical impedance spectroscopy of dominant arm

Dominant arm bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS) and lumbar and hip dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) measurements were conducted simultaneously on 48 post-menopausal women, aged between 43 and 86 years, with no hip or arm fracture history at Department of Radiology of Istanbul University Cerrahpasa Hospital. According to lumbar DXA results, 21 women were classified as normal, 22 as osteopenia and 5 as osteoporosis; whereas hip DXA results classified 30 women as normal, 15 as osteopenia and 3 as osteoporosis. Only 26 participants had identical lumbar and hip bone mineral density (BMD) diagnostic results. Dominant arm characteristic frequencies of normal subjects were statistically significantly different from osteoporotic subjects based on both lumbar (p < 0.005) and hip classification groups (p < 0.001). Hip and lumbar spine DXA BMD values were significantly correlated (r = 0.55, p < 0.005). The dominant arm BIS characteristic frequency, considered as the single predictor in earlier diagnosis of osteoporosis, was found negatively correlated with DXA measurements for both hip and lumbar spine regions. The Spearman rank correlation coefficient of BIS values with the hip DXA values (r = -0.53, p < 0.001) was higher than that of lumbar spine (r = -0.37, p < 0.001). In receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, the best discrimination of dominant arm characteristic frequency was made between normal and osteoporotic subjects based on the hip subgroups (p < 0.001). Both lumbar bone mineral content (BMC) (r = -0.47, p < 0.001) and hip BMC (r = -0.4340, p < 0.005) were statistically significantly correlated with dominant arm characteristic frequency.