The technique of measuring the height in patients with osteoporosis

Introduction: In patients with osteoporosis, the loss of height is indicative of vertebral fractures and periodic height measurement is an essential component of their clinical assessment. It is a challenging task in these patients and there is no recommended, standard technique for measuring the height of these patients. Our objective was to assess the accuracy of the stadiometer and the drop-down scale with the carpenter’s level for height measurements. Method: Height measurements were taken from 30 consecutive patients using the stadiometer and the drop-down scale with carpenter’s scales. Again, three height measurements were taken from 172 patients using only the drop-down scale with carpenter’s scale. Results: The height measurements from stadiometer gave more accurate results compared to drop-down scale (p<0.001). There was no statistically significant difference between a single height measurement and the average of three height measurements. Conclusions: The stadiometer with a carpenter’s level can provide accurate height measurements in patients with osteoporosis. The accuracy of a single measurement is as good as the average of three height measurements