Читать книгу Sarcopenia - Группа авторов - Страница 66

John E. Morley

Division of Geriatric Medicine, Saint Louis University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA

Sarcopenia is recognized as a disease with its own International Classification of Disease. However, sarcopenia is rarely recognized or diagnosed by primary care health professionals. The average general practitioner has between 7 and 10 minutes for each patient visit. To make the diagnosis of sarcopenia requires either measuring grip strength or walking speed together with a measure of lean mass. For a primary care clinician to consider making a referral for the diagnosis and treatment for sarcopenia they need to recognize that there is a likelihood that the person may be sarcopenic. This may be particularly difficult in persons with sarcopenic obesity [1]. For this reason there is a need for a rapid screening test for sarcopenia. The need for such a test is particularly important as persons with sarcopenia are at high risk for deleterious outcomes such as falls, hip fractures, disability, hospitalizations, nursing home admissions, and mortality [2, 3]. Lack of knowledge of the average clinician of the existence of sarcopenia as a disease further increases the likelihood of the diagnosis not being considered [4].