TY - JOUR T1 - A practical measurement of thoracic sarcopenia: correlation with clinical parameters and outcomes in advanced lung cancer JF - ERJ Open Research JO - erjor DO - 10.1183/23120541.00085-2015 VL - 2 IS - 2 SP - 00085-2015 AU - Nicholas G. Wysham AU - Ryan D. Nipp AU - Thomas W. LeBlanc AU - Steven P. Wolf AU - Magnus P. Ekstrom AU - David C. Currow Y1 - 2016/04/01 UR - http://openres.ersjournals.com/content/2/2/00085-2015.abstract N2 - Sarcopenia, the loss of skeletal muscle mass, is common in chronic disease, and has been hypothesised to contribute to fatigue and breathlessness [1, 2]. The research gold standard for assessing sarcopenia relies on whole-body, cross-sectional imaging, an impractical approach in routine care [3]. A more practical alternative measures lumbar skeletal muscle density at L3 using computed tomography (CT) normalised for height, termed the skeletal muscle index (SMI) [4]. While evidence suggests that reduced lumbar SMI correlates with adverse clinical outcomes, such as mortality in lung or colorectal cancers [5], little research has explored how this measure of sarcopenia relates to breathlessness or exercise tolerance.Thoracic sarcopenia can feasibly be measured from routine CT scans but does not correlate to patient-centred outcomes http://ow.ly/102UkQWe would like to acknowledge Miriam Rosen (Duke University, Durham, NC, USA) for her contribution to analysing the thoracic CT scans. ER -