2011 A comparison of ultrasound and clinical examination in the detection of flexor tenosynovitis in early arthritis

Description: Tenosynovitis is widely accepted to be common in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and postulated to be the first manifestation of RA, but its true prevalence in early disease and in particular the hand has not been firmly established. The aims of this study were first to investigate the frequency and distribution of finger flexor tenosynovitis using ultrasound in early arthritis, second to compare clinical examination with ultrasound (US) using the latter as the gold standard.
Conclusions Our study suggest that clinical examination can be a valuable tool for detecting flexor disease in view of its high specificity and positive predictive values, but a negative clinical examination does not exclude inflammation and an US should be considered. Further work is recommended to standardize definitions and image acquisition for peritendinous inflammation for ultrasound.
A comparison of ultrasound and clinical examination in the detection of flexor tenosynovitis in early arthritis Hmamouchi I, Bahiri R, Srifi N, Aktaou S, Abouqal R, Hajjaj-Hassouni N BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders 2011, 12:91 (full text available)