Open AccessCervical Paraspinal Muscle Fatty Degeneration Is Not Associated with Muscle Cross-sectional Area: Qualitative Assessment Is Preferable for Cervical Sarcopenia
Author(s) -
Zachariah Pinter,
Scott C. Wagner,
Donald R. Fredericks,
Ashley Xiong,
Melvin D. Helgeson,
Bradford L. Currier,
Brett A. Freedman,
Christopher K. Kepler,
Benjamin D. Elder,
Mohamad Bydon,
Ahmad Nassr,
Arjun S. Sebastian
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
clinical orthopaedics and related research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.178
H-Index - 204
eISSN - 1528-1132
pISSN - 0009-921X
DOI - 10.1097/corr.0000000000001621
Subject(s) - medicine , sarcopenia , anterior cervical discectomy and fusion , cross sectional study , radiology , magnetic resonance imaging , prospective cohort study , surgery , pathology , cervical spine
Sarcopenia, defined as decreased skeletal mass, is an independent marker of frailty that is not accounted for by other risk-stratification methods. Recent studies have demonstrated a clear association between paraspinal sarcopenia and worse patient-reported outcomes and complications after spine surgery. Currently, sarcopenia is characterized according to either a quantitative assessment of the paraspinal cross-sectional area or a qualitative analysis of paraspinal fatty infiltration on MRI. No studies have investigated whether the cervical paraspinal cross-sectional area correlates with fatty infiltration of the cervical paraspinal muscles on advanced imaging.