The Awareness and Knowledge Regarding Sarcopenia among Healthcare Professionals: A Scoping Review

BACKGROUND: Sarcopenia is a prevalent and costly disease associated with serious negative health outcomes, and its prevalence will further grow as the percentage of elderly rises. Healthcare professionals play a crucial role in the prevention, identification and management of sarcopenia and in promoting the well-being of elders. Awareness and knowledge are the prerequisite and basis for these actions. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the review was to summarize available publications to identify the healthcare professionals' awareness and knowledge about sarcopenia, and to identify knowledge gaps that interventions could address. DESIGN: The scoping review will be performed based on the Scoping Review guidelines published by JBI in Australia. METHODS: Six electronic databases, including PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and CNKI were searched systematically. Two researchers independently screened the retrieved articles and extracted the information. RESULTS: A total of 6 studies were identified, including 5 quantitative studies and 1 qualitative study. These studies mainly were conducted in Australia, Netherlands and Brazil, and none from Asia. The awareness and knowledge of healthcare professionals about sarcopenia varied in different studies. With exception of one study conducted in oncology clinicians, other studies suggested that awareness and knowledge among healthcare professionals was incomplete and limited. CONCLUSION: The relatively few studies indicated that healthcare professionals had low awareness and limited knowledge of sarcopenia, which could influence and hinder the diagnosis and treatment of sarcopenia in practice. Future researches should develop a rigorously tested and valid sarcopenia knowledge assessment tool and researches conducted in larger samples are needed.