Early cartilage lesion and 5-year incident joint surgery in knee osteoarthritis patients: a retrospective cohort study.

OBJECTIVE: to investigate the association between cartilage lesion-related features observed in knee osteoarthritis (OA) patients' first MRI examination and incident knee surgery within 5 years. Additionally, to assess the predictive value of these features for the incident knee surgery. METHODS: We identified patients diagnosed with knee OA and treated at our institution between January 2015 and January 2018, and retrieved their baseline clinical data and first MRI examination films from the information system. Next, we proceeded to determine joint space narrowing grade, cartilage lesion size grade, cartilage full-thickness loss grade and cartilage lesion sum score for the medial and lateral compartments, respectively. Generalized linear regression models examined the association of these features with 5-year incident knee surgery. Positive and negative predictive values (PPVs and NPVs) were determined referring to 5-year incident knee surgery. RESULTS: Totally, 878 participants (knees) were found eligible to form the study population. Within the 5 years, surgery was performed on 61 knees. None of the cartilage-related features had been found significantly associated with incident surgery. The results were similar for medial and lateral compartments. The PPVs were low for all the features. CONCLUSIONS: Among symptomatic clinically diagnosed OA knees, cartilage lesions observed in the first MRI examinations were not found to be associated with the occurrence of joint surgery within a 5-year period. All these cartilage-related features appear to have no additional value in predicting 5-year incident joint surgery.

Comparison of contrast-enhanced ultrasonography and contrast-enhanced MRI for the assessment of vascularization of hydroxyapatite orbital implants.

OBJECTIVE: To compare contrast-enhanced ultrasound and contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging for the assessment of vascularization of hydroxyapatite orbital implants. METHODS: Ten patients who underwent monthly contrast-enhanced ultrasound and contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging following implantation were analyzed. The two modalities were compared according to their ability to visualize the progress of vascularization at monthly intervals. RESULTS: There were no differences in the findings shown by these two methods. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound provided better visualization of the dynamic process of vascularization than contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging. There were no significant differences in the areas and the time to completion of fibrovascular ingrowth observed by contrast-enhanced ultrasound and contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging, indicating that the findings of these two examinations were consistently similar. CONCLUSIONS: Contrast-enhanced ultrasound is useful for the assessment of vascularization of hydroxyapatite orbital implants and provides better visualization of the dynamic process than contrast-enhanced MRI.