From the July 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


David Comley, vice president of Lone Oak Medical, believes that peripheral DXA is a cost-effective way for practices to screen for bone density. It can determine the patients who are at high risk so they can go on to undergo a central DXA exam and prevent those at low risk from undergoing the expensive test. “If you can screen out the people who are not at risk using a lowcost device and then make sure the people who are at risk get the central test they need, that’s really a more efficient way of using both devices,” says Comley.

The other technology used for peripheral measurement is ultrasound, but Comley believes it is a less-effective option because it’s unable to reliably make the same reading consistently. Accudxa2 is designed with a laser positioning system that places the finger in the proper position so that when the patient comes back for a retest, it’s easy to place the finger in the same position. NOF’s Singer says that central DXA scanning is the only gold standard for diagnosing osteoporosis and monitoring treatment.


New indications saving the market
GE Healthcare and Hologic, the two major players in the market, are turning some of their attention to body composition. Sports medicine is one industry that is particularly interested in order to help maintain a high level of physical performance and monitor injury recovery. Among GE’s customers are the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Football League (NFL) in the U.S., over 150 Division I college athletic programs in the U.S., the Gatorade Sports Science Lab, and Olympic programs in the U.S. and France.

The DXA exam provides information on the fat, lean, and bone mass in the arms, legs and core. It also provides quantification of visceral fat, which is the fat that surrounds internal organs. In the NFL, the Green Bay Packers use GE’s Lunar iDXA system to assess symmetry in their players. Their concern is that if a player is right handed, he will have more muscle mass in the right leg verses the left leg but the DXA exam helps them even that out.

A New York University School of Medicine study from October investigated the use of DXA for measuring body fat percentage in 50 postmenopausal women who underwent a bone density exam. It found that DXA may be an effective approach to evaluating a patient’s metabolic health.

The conventional way to measure body fat is by using body mass index (BMI) but it doesn’t account for the patient’s age and gender. For example, a 25-year-old man who’s 5-foot-8 and weighs 150 pounds has the same BMI as a 55-year-old woman with the same height and weight.

July 2015 Magazine

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