Usefulness of the Measurement of Psoas Muscle Volume for Sarcopenia Diagnosis in Patients with Liver Disease

Computed tomography (CT) is often used in the diagnosis of sarcopenia. In this study, we validated the assessment of sarcopenia by the psoas muscle volume using versatile software. The study involved a retrospective analysis of data from 190 patients with liver disease who underwent grip-strength testing and abdominal pelvic computed tomography. To assess sarcopenia, SYNAPSE 3D was used to obtain the skeletal muscle index, the psoas muscle index (PMI), and the simple method. We also used the recently proposed PMI cutoff values, for which the usefulness has been evaluated (O-PMI). The cutoff value of the psoas muscle volume index (PMVI) was determined using one of the diagnostic methods as the gold standard. All diagnostic methods showed that patients with sarcopenia had shorter survival, with O-PMI having the highest hazard ratio (HR) (HR, 6.12; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.6–14.41; p < 0.001). Even when sarcopenia could not be diagnosed by O-PMI, low PMVI was associated with shorter survival (HR, 3.53; 95% CI, 1.34–9.32; p = 0.01). PMVI may be useful in the evaluation of sarcopenia, including the identification of poor overall survival in cases that cannot be diagnosed by O-PMI, which is considered more useful than PMI.