Identification of Probable sarcopenia based on SARC-F and SARC-CalF in older adults from a low-resource setting

Claudia L Vidal-Cuellar; Guiliana Mas; Pamela Ayamamani-Torres; Toshio Yazawa; Oscar Rosas-Carrasco; Tania Tello

doi:10.22540/JFSF-07-222

Identification of Probable sarcopenia based on SARC-F and SARC-CalF in older adults from a low-resource setting

J Frailty Sarcopenia Falls. 2022 Dec 1;7(4):222-230. doi: 10.22540/JFSF-07-222. eCollection 2022 Dec.

Authors

Claudia L Vidal-Cuellar^{1

2}, Guiliana Mas^{1

2}, Pamela Ayamamani-Torres², Toshio Yazawa², Oscar Rosas-Carrasco³, Tania Tello^{1

2

4}

Affiliations

¹ Gerontology Institute, Cayetano Heredia University, Lima, Peru.
² School of Medicine, Cayetano Heredia University, Lima, Peru.
³ Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de Mexico, Health Department, Mexico City, Mexico.
⁴ Cayetano Heredia Hospital, Lima, Peru.

Abstract

Objectives: We aimed to investigate the frequency of probable sarcopenia and to compare the performance of SARC-F and SARC-CalF for detecting this condition in outpatient older adults from a low-resource setting.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional study in outpatient older adults aged ≥60 years attending a hospital in Peru, between August 2019 and February 2020. Probable sarcopenia was defined as low handgrip strength (<27 kg in men and <16 in women). We used SARC-F and SARC-CalF with their standard cut-off points (≥4 and ≥11, respectively). Low calf circumference was defined as ≤33 cm in women and ≤34 cm in men. We performed sensitivity and specificity analyses.

Results: We included 206 older adults, 102 (49.5%) aged ≥75 years old and 140 (67.9%) females. Probable sarcopenia was present in 36.40% of the participants. SARC-F ≥4 was observed in 29.61% and SARC-CalF ≥11 in 41.26% of the population. SARC-F≥4 showed 41.33% sensitivity and 77.10% specificity, whereas SARC-Calf ≥11 had 50.67% sensitivity and 64.12% specificity.

Conclusion: We found that one out of three of the population had probable sarcopenia. SARC-Calf showed superior but still low sensitivity than SARC-F, while both had moderate specificity and thus may be useful for ruling out the disease in clinical practice.

Keywords: Low-resource setting; Probable sarcopenia; SARC-CalF; SARC-F; Sarcopenia.