Bone mineral density measurements in post-menopausal women: When and which areas should be measured?

The aim of this study is to evaluate perimenopausal and postmenopausal women with extensive bone pain, who were not undergoing any osteoporosis treatment, were nonsmokers and who had a body mass index (bmi) below 30, to determine which age groups and which areas should have bone mineral density (bmd) measurements taken by dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (dxa). the study comprised 243 perimenopausal and postmenopausal (age range 42–78 years) women who presented at our clinic with extensive bone pain. all cases had bmd measurements taken by the same dxa machine on the right femoral neck (rt), the left femoral neck (lt) and lumbar vertebrae 1–4 (l1-4t). the patients were assigned to one of three groups; group 1, under 50 years of age (n=83); group 2, 50-60 years of age (n=103); group 3, over 60 years of age (n=57). the difference between the t-scores obtained from the bmd measurements of the whole group was found to be significant with the kruskar-wallis test. to determine between which age groups the difference in the t-scores was statistically significant, the patients were allocated to 3 age-related groups. the t-scores of these three groups were compared and evaluated with the mann-whitney u-test. the t-score differences (rt, lt, l1-4t) between group 1 and group 2 were found to be statistically significant, between group 1 and group 3, statistically highly significant, and between group 2 and group 3 there was no statistical significance. the differences between the t-score measurements of left hip, right hip and lumbar 1–4 vertabrae of the 3 created groups were statistically evaluated with a 95% confidence interval. in each group rt, lt and l1-4t were evaluated with no statistical difference. our results lead us to believe that postmenopausal women with extensive bone pain should undergo routine bmd measurement after the age of 60 and that these measurements will be sufficient from just one area.