Eighty percent of patients with osteopenia ...

In many radiological departments conventional radiography has been replaced by digital radiography. Thus, the purpose of this study was to analyze the visual detection of osteopenia / osteoporosis of digital and conventional radiographs. In 286 patients we retrospectively evaluate radiographs of the lumbar spine in two planes. One hundred and twenty eight patients were normal and 158 patients digital radiographs. Patients with existing fractures of the spine were excluded. Four experienced musculoskeletal radiologists were aware of the value of DXA and patients

age is estimated independently of bone density of the lumbar spines were normal or decreased. The results of dual X-ray densitometry served as standard reference. The limit for the diagnosis of osteopenia was T-scores less than 1SD according to WHO classification of osteoporosis. The sensitivity / specificity of 86% / 36% for conventional and 72% / 47% for digital radiography. Overall accuracy of diagnosis was 68% for conventional and 64% for digital radiography. Eighty percent of patients with osteopenia and 96% of patients with osteoporosis were correctly assessed as true positive results on conventional radiographs and 65% (osteopenia) and 82% (osteoporosis) in digital radiographs. Interobserver agreement was markedly lower digital (35%) than for conventional radiographs (73%). However, these differences were not statistically significant. There is no significant difference in diagnostic accuracy in the evaluation of osteopenia / osteoporosis using digital and conventional radiographs, respectively. However, high interobserver variance on digital X-ray shows that the visual lasix buy online assessment of osteoporosis / osteopenia is problematic, which may be related to image processing and postprocessing algorithms that control the visual aspect of bone density. .