Bone loss occurs universally with aging, but among women there is an acceleration of bone loss that coincides temporally with menopause1. Detection of bone mass can be done by non-invasive techniques like Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry, bone densitometry etc which can specifically quantify bone loss, but these are not cost effective & not available everywhere. Therefore a need arouse to assess the skeletal deformities in absence of expensive investigations by simple clinical measures which can be used at community level too.
Surveyor s Flexi curve ruler, Carpenter tri-square, Plumb line, Measuring Tape, Bathroom Weighing scale.
New York Posture Rating Scale (NYPRS), Data Collection Sheet and Consent Form.
Cross Sectional Study.
Stratified sampling method.
300 subjects, urban areas (Group U): 150 subjects, rural areas (Group R): 150 subjects in the age group 45–55 years (Gr A), 56–65 years (Gr B), 66–75 years (Gr C) and who have attained menopause.
Posture of the subjects was evaluated by a quantitative posture rating score using New York Posture Rating Scale using the plumb line method and Surveyor s flexi curve ruler.
Index of lumbar lordosis, Index of thoracic kyphosis and NYPRS score.
There were no significant differences between the posture of urban & rural populations except in the Index of Lordosis (Gr. A (urban v/s rural) -p: 0.01, Gr. B (urban v/s rural) p: 0.003, Gr. C (urban v/s rural) p: 0.002. NYPRS scores showed a declining pattern from age group of 45–55 years to 56–65 yrs to 66–75 yrs in both urban & rural groups.
It was concluded from the study that posture of the urban and rural postmenopausal women is the same except difference in lumbar lordosis and that the posture tends to worsen with advancing age in both rural and urban women.
Post menopausal women, skeletal deformities, thoracic kyphosis, posture, flexi curve ruler, New York Posture Rating Scale
