Comparison of four sarcopenia screening questionnaires in community-dwelling older adults from Poland using six sets of international diagnostic criteria of sarcopenia

Introduction

There are four screening sarcopenia questionnaires (SARC-F, SARC-CalF, MSRA-5, MSRA-7). To unambiguously determine which of them is the most effective tool in community-dwelling older adults, we performed a diagnostic accuracy study. The aim of the analysis was to assess the diagnostic values of SARC-F, SARC-CalF, MSRA-5, MSRA-7 and compare their psychometric properties against six criterion standards (EWGSOP1, EWGSOP2, FNIH, AWGS, IWGS, SCWD criteria).

Materials and methods

We included 100 community-dwelling volunteers aged ≥ 65yrs. The sensitivity/specificity analyses were performed. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and area under the ROC curves (AUC) were calculated to compare the overall diagnostic accuracy of the four questionnaires. Ideal screening tools should have reasonably high sensitivity and specificity, and an AUC value above 0.7.

Results

With respect to the six criterion standards used, the sensitivity of SARC-F, SARC-CalF, MSRA-5, and MSRA-7 ranged 35.0–90.0%, 20.0–75.0%, 64.7–90.0%, 76.5–91.7%, respectively, whereas the specificity ranged 86.9–91.1%, 80.0–90.0%, 45.8–48.8%, 28.9–31.0% respectively. The AUCs of SARC-F, SARC-CalF, MSRA-5, and MSRA-7 ranged from 0.655–0.882, 0.711–0.874, 0.618–0.782 and 0.588–0.711 respectively. Only SARC-CalF had AUC >0.7 and <0.9 against the six criterion standards but obesity was a confounding factor, which may affect the diagnostic power of SARC-CalF. MSRA-7 had the smallest AUC of all the questionnaires and MSRA-5 had slightly larger AUC than MSRA-7.

Conclusion

Based on our analysis, the standard sarcopenia screening questionnaires deliver contradictory results in many practically occurring cases. It appears that SARC-CalF is an optimal choice for screening sarcopenia in community-dwelling older adults.