Sarcopenia: a deserving recipient of an Australian ICD‐10‐AM code

Zanker, Jesse; Scott, David; Brennan‐Olsen, Sharon L; Duque, Gustavo

doi:10.5694/mja2.50432

Topics

To the Editor: In July 2019, sarcopenia — a progressive and generalised skeletal muscle condition involving loss of skeletal muscle mass and function1 — was awarded a code in the International Classification of Diseases, tenth revision, Australian modification (ICD‐10‐AM). This recognition has arrived 30 years after Irwin Rosenberg first described the condition in 1989.2

1 Australian Institute of Musculoskeletal Science, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC
2 Western Health, Melbourne, VIC
3 Monash University, Melbourne, VIC

Correspondence: jesse.zanker@unimelb.org.au

Acknowledgements:

Jesse Zanker is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. David Scott is supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) RD Wright Biomedical Career Development Fellowship (GNT1123014). Sharon Brennan‐Olsen is supported by an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship (1107510).

Competing interests:

No relevant disclosures.

1. Cruz‐Jentoft AJ, Sayer AA. Sarcopenia. Lancet 2019; 393: 2636–2646.
2. Rosenberg IH. Summary comments. Am J Clin Nutr 1989; 50: 1231–1233.
3. Cruz‐Jentoft AJ, Baeyens JP, Bauer JM, et al. Sarcopenia: European consensus on definition and diagnosis: report of the European working group on sarcopenia in older people. Age Ageing 2010; 39: 412–23.
4. Cruz‐Jentoft AJ, Bahat G, Bauer J, et al. Sarcopenia: revised European consensus on definition and diagnosis. Age Ageing 2019; 48: 16–31.
5. Zanker J, Scott D, Reijnierse EM, et al. Establishing an operational definition of sarcopenia in Australia and New Zealand: Delphi method based consensus statement. J Nutr Health Aging 2019; 23: 105–110.

Online responses are no longer available. Please refer to our instructions for authors page for more information.