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@loriesco That’s a fair perspective, and it does line up with what that paper is saying. BTMs like P1NP and CTX aren’t critical for diagnosing osteoporosis, and they’re not something every patient needs.
Where they can be very helpful is on the management side. They give earlier feedback on whether a treatment is having the expected effect, which can be useful in some situations especially when you don’t want to wait a year or two for changes on a DEXA scan. But even then, they don’t always change what a doctor would do, which is probably why some clinicians don’t rely on them heavily.
So I’d agree they’re not essential, and I still think they can be a useful tool in the right context. It probably just depends on the individual case and how much that early feedback would actually influence treatment decisions.
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@babs10 my doc only did CTX at my request after 8 months of fosamax. Now after about a year after reclast he is doing that test. After fosamax CTX was 58, after reclast it is 76, he is thrilled with that. I asked about getting another yearly DEXA scan but unless the “doctors” at the insurance companies allow it I have no idea if reclast helped a little, or a lot, or hardly at all. He did point out that since my one bad number was -3.5 (others -2.6 to -2.8 before reclast) that number could not have possibly changed enough to change the course of treatment. I am scheduling an out of pocket DEXA since I can’t stand not knowing my numbers (good or not so good) after treatment with a very powerful drug. After they tell us DEXA is the gold standard, BTMs seem hit or miss?
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@babs10 well I am an overachiever and if I can get a baseline on something, I always want to do that, myself! 🙂