The role of the radiologist when encountering osteoporosis in women.

Abstract

This article describes the extent and potentially devastating consequences of osteoporosis in adult women. There is discussion of the importance of radiologists in the correct diagnosis and reporting of probable osteoporotic vertebral fractures on medical imaging studies. The Genant semiquantitative method for diagnosing osteoporotic vertebral fractures is presented. The importance of dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry reproducibility is also briefly discussed.