Ultrasound measurement using CUBA clinical system can discriminate betweenwomen with and without vertebral fractures

The purpose of this study was to assess the ultrasound (US) parameters meas ured by the Contact Ultrasound Bone Analyser (CUBA) clinical system for dis criminating the subjects with vertebral fractures from those without verteb ral fractures. The subjects consisted of 114 postmenopausal women over age 50 (mean +/- SD: 72.2 +/- 8.7). Seventy-three had vertebral fractures (frac ture group) and 41 had no vertebral fractures (control group). Values of al l US parameters and bone mineral density (BMD) in the fracture group were s ignificantly lower than those in the control group, even after adjusting fo r age. Area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was 0.7 68 +/- 0.056 (mean +/- SE) for broadband ultrasound attenuation (BUA), 0.82 8 +/- 0.035 for velocity of sound (VOS), 0.707 +/- 0.058 for lumbar spine, 0.872 +/- 0.050 for femoral neck, 0.790 +/- 0.050 for trochanter, and 0.695 +/- 0.060 for Ward's triangle. There were no significant differences among the areas under the ROC curves in BUA, VOS, lumbar spine, femoral neck, tr ochanter, and Ward's triangle, US parameters (BUA and VOS) had the same dis criminatory power as spine and hip BMD for evaluating the vertebral fractur e risk. As far as the disadvantages of the use of BMD measurement against U S measurement, US measurement is potentially useful For screening of verteb ral fractures. However, the bias concerning the proportion of the numbers o f patients with or without vertebral fractures could not be neglected in th is study.