What Does a Bone Density Evaluation Show?

Even your most basic movements involve a combination of your muscles, ligaments, tendons, and how they attach to your bones and joints. Your skeletal system forms the foundation of your body, and while your bones look like solid objects, they’re actually dense layers of living tissue that also protect your vital organs and create blood cells.

Your bones are constantly healing and rebuilding, but several problems can affect their development, wear down their structure, and make them weaker. Diagnostic testing like bone density scans are essential in examining your bones for possible problems. 

Dr. Shawn Veiseh and our dedicated medical staff in Beverly Hills, California, offer bone density screenings to identify your risk of bone fractures so you can take measures to prevent a devastating injury.

To better understand what bone density screenings can do, let’s look at some common problems, how the scan works, and what it reveals about your health.

Common bone conditions

Here are some skeletal problems people frequently deal with:

Injury

Accidents, falls, and sports injuries are often responsible for fractures and breaks in your bones.

Arthritis

Inflammation in your joints can lead to further damage over time, with osteoarthritis being the most common form.

Osteoporosis

This is a condition where the weblike layers of your bone become more porous, causing them to weaken and be at greater risk of breaking.

Osteopenia

Osteopenia is also a weakening of bone but not quite as severe as osteoporosis.

Rickets

The result of a vitamin deficiency, this condition causes your bones not to mineralize properly, is common in children, and often affects the knees.

Autoimmune conditions

Autoimmune conditions cause your immune system to attack your bones. Examples include rheumatoid arthritis, celiac disease, type 1 diabetes, and systemic lupus erythematosus.

Hormonal changes can also affect your bones and become more of an issue as you get older, especially for women in menopause, when they’re going through radical hormonal changes.

What a DEXA scan does

A DEXA, or dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry scan uses a highly precise X-ray to measure your bone density. Two X-rays are done simultaneously, at different frequencies, to target your bones and gather the most accurate information possible. 

The peak readings from both X-rays provide information about your soft tissue and total absorption, which provides your bone density reading. The test is noninvasive, exposes you to very low levels of radiation, and is more accurate than a regular X-ray.

Conditions a scan can diagnose

With the information provided by a bone density scan, we can assess the natural amount of bone loss that comes with aging, track bone loss due to medications or treatments that adversely affect them, and check how well your bones are responding to treatment. 

A scan is highly effective at tracking osteopenia and osteoporosis as it develops. It also aids us in determining your risk of bone fracture from weak or otherwise compromised bones.

This scan is often used for those over 50 if they’ve broken bones before, women over 65, and men over 70. However, bone density scans are also used for a variety of other reasons.

If you’re having problems with weak bones, a DEXA scan is the best way to figure out the extent of your problem and get the right treatment. If you’re ready for the test, make an appointment with Dr. Veiseh and our team today. Call our office or schedule a visit online.