Transpedicular Biopsy versus Bone Densitometry in Diagnostic Process for Osteoporosis

Abstract

Introduction Osteoporosis is a pandemic disease that affects women and men worldwide, being the principal cause for bone fractures after the age of 75 years, making a gigantic cost in health for families, institutions, and countries. There is a need for a simple, sensible, and specific system of detection and diagnosis for this disease. It is also needed for it to be identified as a disease apart from other vertebral and bone destruction processes. Bone densitometry does give us a good sensitivity 95% but less than 45% of specificity, so many times other bone diseases get diagnosed wrongly as osteoporosis and mistreated and vice versa. Because of this situation, our study proposes the use of a transpedicular biopsy be added as part of the osteoporosis diagnostic schedule. We also took the advantage of our study for doing optic and electronic microscopic analysis of each sample to see the microarchitecture of the trabecular and transpedicular bone searching and describing specific disease patterns in osteoporotic bone. Materials and Methods Overall, 30 human vertebral body specimens, OSAT questionnaires, bone densitometer, Trans Quirurgical Jamshidi trocar, pathologic specimen analysis equipment for optic and electronic microscopy, and SPSS data analysis software. During the spine surgery consultation processes, all the patients older than 45 years were given OSAT questionnaires to answer. Patients who came out positive were subject for a bone densitometry. From this list of patient, those attending for a spine surgical procedure were under previous authorization summited to a transpedicular vertebral body biopsy. Each specimen was processed for optic and electronic microscopy then they were analyzed for the following microstructural characteristics: trabecular alignment and density, collagen fibers and their bonds, cell number, and collagen chain alignment. Three different observers analyzed all data and a Kappa analysis was determined, together with a Pearson correlation. Results This protocol is still in process and the results will be ready for February 25, 2015. Conclusion This protocol is still in process. Conclusion of the study will be ready for February 25, 2015.