Reply to: In silico diagnosis for sarcopenia is not possible without anthropometric, strength, and performance assessmen

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Reply to: In silico diagnosis for sarcopenia is not possible without anthropometric, strength, and performance assessments Stefania Zannoni 1 & Domenico Albano 2,3 & Maria Laura Jannone 1 & Carmelo Messina 2,4 & Luca Maria Sconfienza 2,4 Published online: 24 November 2020 # ISS 2020

Dear Sirs, We thank the authors of this Letter to the Editor, which they postulate commenting on our paper entitled “Correlation between muscle mass and quality around the hip and of psoas muscles at L3 level using unenhanced CT scans” [1], recently published in Skeletal Radiology. Our work had the unique purpose of testing the correlation between psoas muscle mass and quality estimation at L3 and that of hip muscles within the same patient. In their letter, authors point out some general considerations on sarcopenia, which seems to be totally unrelated to our paper. First, the authors entitle their letter “In Silico Diagnosis for Sarcopenia is not Possible Without Anthropometric, Strength, and Performance Assessments”. We totally agree with that, as also witnessed by some previous papers of our group [2–5]. However, we hardly understand which is the connection between this title and our paper. The term in silico is a jargon expression meaning “performed on computer or via computer simulation” [6], which is something we did not do in our work. Similarly, our paper is not concerned with a diagnosis of sarcopenia, but simply with demonstrating a correlation between psoas muscle mass and quality measured at L3 level and that of hip muscles at different levels of the hip and thigh in the same patient [1].

* Domenico Albano [email protected] 1

Unità Operativa di Radiologia Diagnostica e Interventistica, Azienda Ospedaliera San Paolo, Via Antonio di Rudinì, 8, 20142 Milan, Italy

2

IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Galeazzi, Via Riccardo Galeazzi 4, 20161 Milan, Italy

3

Sezione di Scienze Radiologiche, Dipartimento di Biomedicina, Neuroscienze e Diagnostica Avanzata, Università degli Studi di Palermo, Via del Vespro 127, 90127 Palermo, Italy

4

Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche per la Salute, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Pascal 36, 20133 Milan, Italy

Second, authors state that we “concluded that measurements of hip muscle mass/quality in patients undergoing hip surgery were feasible for sarcopenia”. However, this is not true, as we simply conclude that “measurements of mass and quality of hip muscles are correlated to those performed on the psoas muscles at L3 level”. We only postulated that our measurements might be potentially used in the assessment of sarcopenia in patients before undergoing hip surgery, but the diagnosis of sarcopenia was not within the scope of our paper [1]. Notably, our series was not comprised of patients undergoing hip surgery but of patients undergoing abdominal computed tomography scans for different reasons, as clearly stated in methods. Last, we totally agree with authors that the diagnosis of sarcopenia needs the evaluation of anthropometric data to calculate the skeletal muscle