Screening Tools for Sarcopenia in Community-Dwellers: A Scoping Review

Introduction: Sarcopenia is characterised by a progressive and generalised loss of skeletal muscle mass, strength and/or performance. It is associated with adverse health outcomes such as increased morbidity, functional decline and death. Early detection of sarcopenia in community-dwelling older adults is important to prevent these outcomes. Our scoping review evaluates validated screening tools that are used to identify community dwelling older individuals at risk of sarcopenia and appraises their performance against international consensus definitions. Materials and Methods: A systematic search on MEDLINE, PubMed and EMBASE was performed for articles that evaluated the predictive validity measures of screening tools and validated them against at least I internationally recognised diagnostic criterion for sarcopenia. Results: Of the 17 articles identified in oursearch, 8 used questionnaires as screening tool, 2 utilised anthropometric measurements, 3 used a combination of questionnaire and anthropometric measures and 1 used a physical performance measure (chair stand test). The questionnaire Strength, Assistance with walking, Rising from chair, Climbing stairs and Falls (SARC-F) has the highest specificity (94.4-98.7%) but low sensitivity (4.2-9.9%), with they-item questionnaire outperforming the 3-item version. When SARC-F is combined with calf circumference, its sensitivity is enhanced with improvement in overall diagnostic performance. Although equation-based anthropometric screening tools performed well, they warrant external validation. Conclusion: Our scoping review identified 6 candidate tools to screen for sarcopenia. Direct comparison studies in the community would help to provide insights into their comparative performance as screening tools. More studies arc needed to reach a consensus on the best screening tool(s) to be used in clinical practice.