Utility of multidetector computed tomography quantitative measurements in identifying sarcopenia: a propensity score matched study

Objective To evaluate the utility of multidetector computed tomography MDCT quantitative measurements in identifying sarcopenia. Materials and methods The clinical data and MDCT images of 64 patients of sarcopenia and 184 non-sarcopenic participants between October 2020 and January 2021were retrospectively analyzed. Propensity score matching was used to match the sarcopenic patients with the non-sarcopenic participants. Two radiologists independently measured the cross-sectional area (CSA) of skeletal muscle and intramuscular fat tissue and CT density of skeletal muscle at the middle L3 vertebral level on CT images of all participants. Intra-observer agreement was evaluated via intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC). A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was built for each variable. Correlations between CT parameters and clinical data were assessed via Pearson or Spearman correlation coefficient. Results A total of 74 participants (mean age 72 ± 4 years, range 66–85 years; 38 men and 36 women) were included, comprising 37 sarcopenic patients and 37 non-sarcopenic participants. There were no significant intergroup differences regarding age, sex ratio, and body mass index (BMI) ( P