“
“Depletion of skeletal muscle mass (sarcopenia) predicts survival in patients with cancer or liver cirrhosis. Recently, many reports have used computed tomography (CT) to measure muscle area to define sarcopenia. However, the definition of sarcopenia using CT has not been fully determined. The aim of this study was to establish formulae to calculate the standard area of skeletal muscle. Forty-five healthy adults (24 men and 21 women, aged 21–66 years) who wished to donate part of their liver for transplantation underwent CT. Cross-sectional areas (cm2) of skeletal muscle were measured at the caudal end

of the third lumbar vertebra. Regression analysis was performed to establish formulae to calculate the standard area of skeletal muscle. A validation conducted on 30 other healthy adults was performed to check the accuracy of formulae. Men had a median skeletal muscle area of 155.0 cm2 (range, 114.0–203.0), compared with 111.7 cm2 (range, 89.8–139.3) this website in women (P < 0.001). Furthermore, skeletal muscle area significantly correlated with body surface area (BSA) in men (P < 0.0001, r2 = 0.60) and women (P < 0.0001, r2 = 0.78). The formulae to calculate skeletal selleck kinase inhibitor muscle area were 126.9 × BSA − 66.2 in men and 125.6 × BSA − 81.1 in women. The estimated muscle area significantly correlated with actual muscle area in men (P = 0.003, r2 = 0.64) and women (P = 0.0001, r2 = 0.70). Sarcopenia can be defined

by the difference between measured data and calculated data using our new formulae. “
“In their interesting review of noninvasive assessment of liver fibrosis,1 Martínez et al. note that “the introduction of noninvasive Farnesyltransferase methods in clinical

practice is making such slow headway in the field of hepatology”. However, their statement that “an exception to this rule is France, where three well-validated methods (FibroTest, Fibrometer, and FibroScan) have been approved by the public health system and are routinely used in clinical practice” has to be discussed. Certainly, there is no doubt about wide use of these methods in clinical practice, despite the restrictions stated by the French National Authority for Health (Haute Autorité de Santé [HAS]).2 In February 2011, the Social Health Insurance finalized the decisional process of listing those techniques for eligibility for reimbursement, subject to very strict rules according to this advice. Transient elastography, for example, will be reimbursed only when performed by specialists, for the follow-up of untreated patients with chronic hepatitis C and no evidence of cirrhosis, once a year only (with the exception of patients presenting a risk of rapid evolution to cirrhosis). One should also be careful when qualifying noninvasive methods of liver fibrosis assessment as “well-validated” in “large cohorts” of patients. First, numerous accuracy studies of these methods were carried out and published by their manufacturers or inventors.