Ultrasound Bone Densitometer

Ultrasound Bone Densitometer or Quantitative Ultrasound (QUS)

Quantitative Ultrasound (QUS) offers you portable and accurate technology for measuring bone properties at the heel without the use of ionizing radiation. When measured at the heel, QUS helps you accurately predict fracture risk for post-menopausal women.

Our CM Series of bone ultrasonometers is built on advanced QUS technology proven of many research studies

Background.Reduced bone mineral density (BMD) is associated with renal osteodystrophy and osteoporosis in end-stage renal failure patients. Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is the standard non-invasive method to assess BMD, but is not always widely available. Quantitative heel ultrasound (QUS) is a mobile, relatively inexpensive, easy to perform and radiation-free method which can predict fractures to the same extent as DXA. This study assessed the usefulness of QUSvsDXA in determining BMD in chronic haemodialysis patients.

Methods.Patients had their BMD at the hip and spine measured by DXA. QUS of the left heel (CM-300) measured speed of sound (SOS). Correlations between DXA and QUS parameters were calculated. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves were plotted for SOS and used to define cut-off points for calculating sensitivities and specificities for SOS. Femoral neck BMD was applied as the standard for diagnosing osteoporosis (T≤−2.5) and osteopaenia (T>−2.5 and ≤−1) by WHO criteria.

Results.Eighty eight patients (45.5% women), mean age 58±17 years, were studied. A total of 19% and 49% had femoral neck BMDs in the `osteoporosis' and `osteopaenia' ranges, respectively

Conclusions.DXA and QUS parameters were significantly correlated. However, sensitivities and specificities of QUS parameters were not sufficiently high for QUS to be used simply as an alternative to DXA. The relatively high negative predictive values suggest that QUS may reliably screen out patients unlikely to have a BMD in the osteoporotic range. The relatively low positive predictive values, however, mean that subjects classified as osteoporotic using QUS require further investigations such as DXA to confirm the diagnosis.