Letter to the editor concerning "Efficacy of two opportunistic methods for screening osteoporosis in lumbar spine surgery patients" by T.-T. Xu, et al. (Eur Spine J [2023]: doi: 10.1007/s00586-023-07938-4).

PURPOSE: To write a letter to editors concerning "Efficacy of two opportunistic methods for screening osteoporosis in lumbar spine surgery patients" by T.-T. Xu, et al. (Eur Spine J [2023]: doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00586-023-07938-4 ). We try to compare the target article with similar articles.

METHODS

Compared the target article with similar articles.

RESULTS

The mentioned target article and the contrasting articles had similar research design and objectives, but they came to completely different results. The ways of calculating the lumbar VBQ score were similar to those previously published. However, the large variations in threshold values of the VBQ should be assessed carefully again before interpreting, either in methodology or variations resulted from other factors.

CONCLUSION

We advised the authors of the targeted article to interpret and analyze their research again the calculation of lumbar VBQ to possibly explain the large variations of the VBQ scores.