The International Registry of patients with sarcopenia: applying research in sarcopenia to clinical practice

Sarcopenia has been recently recognized as a disease for the
purposes of coding (ICD-10-CM M62.84) and reimbursement
[1, 2]. This acknowledgement has important implications
for researchers, as this disease is related to malnutrition
and frailty [3], functional decline, high rate of hospitalization,
loss of quality of life [4] and increased mortality [5],
but the definitive diagnostic [6] and therapeutic strategies
[2] to counteract this reversible condition remain a challenge
[7].
The European Geriatric Medicine Society (EuGMS) is
a leader in activities around sarcopenia in Europe and promoted
the European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older
People (EWGSOP), which has proposed the most widely
used algorithm for sarcopenia case finding and recommends
assessment of sarcopenia in all geriatric patients and every
healthcare setting [7].
The EuGMS founded the Special Interest Group (SIG)
on Sarcopenia in September 2015, and published the first
special issue on sarcopenia in European Geriatric Medicine
in 2016 [8]; since then, the number of formal members of
this interest group has increased to 74, making it the most
extensive SIG of the EuGMS.