Importance of osteoporosis screening in the perimenopausal age.

Objectives: The level of awareness of Saudi perimenopausal women regarding the importance of osteoporosis screening should be determined, and obstacles that prevent/delay them from doing so should be identified.

Methods: This was a national-level cross-sectional study conducted during the months of September and October 2021. A total of 1716 respondents were women, after men and any woman younger than 40 years were excluded.

Results: Participants' awareness was identified by five questions, dividing the cohort into three groups. Only 22 (1.3%) participants were completely aware, 12 (0.7%) participants had no idea about screening, and the remaining 1682 (98%) participants were partially aware. The aware group was significantly associated with only being older and already diagnosed with osteoporosis (p < 0.001). The obstacles that prevented participants from performing screening were significantly associated with a lack of doctor advice and requests (p < 0.001) and with participants being worried about other diseases (p < 0.001), age (p < 0.001), level of education (p = 0.013) and monthly income (p < 0.001).

Conclusion: Although osteoporosis is a preventable disease, unfortunately, only 22 (1.3%) participants were fully aware of the importance of osteoporosis screening. Therefore, more efforts are needed from all doctors dealing with perimenopausal women to discuss and screen them.