Age and Gender Specific Sarcopenia Nomogram for Indian Children

Current literature strongly recommends sarcopenia and frailty assessment over routine anthropometric measurements to predict outcomes in any chronic illness and its treatment. All the currently available scales are based on western data. Unfortunately, there is no data on the normal range of muscle mass from our population and this skews comparison and outcomes.

In a first of its kind, we intend to develop an age and gender specific nomogram for normal muscle mass in children from the Indian subcontinent. The sum of psoas muscle area at L3-L4 intervertebral disc on CT scan of children who undergo CT for trauma or acute illness across age groups from 1-16 years are collected. We are looking to collect 1000 such scans to make a reliable nomogram. The data will be completely anonymised as only the age, gender and psoas muscle data is required.

This will enable an India-specific nomogram to accurately define frailty and sarcopenia in the pediatric population which will in turn help in predicting and prognosticating the nutritional status of children with any chronic pathology. The trend when charted will also help in assessment of reversal of sarcopenia