Rheumatology Medical News about rheumatoid arthritis;finger joint power Doppler ultrasonography

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Screening for rheumatoid arthritis with finger joint power Doppler ultrasonography: Quantification of conventional power Doppler ultrasonographic scoring
Modern Rheumatology, 06/22/09

Fukae J et al. – Study reports a novel finger joint Power Doppler ultrasonography (PD-US) scoring system that is both useful and applicable for diagnosing rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Methods

Aim was to compare the 2 PD-US methods to measure synovial vascularity level of joint inflammation and assess RA
A novel PD-US finger joint scoring method that introduces quantitative measurements into the conventional PD-US assessment method was assessed
Finger joint PD-US was performed on 69 pts with RA and 70 pts who had multiple joint pain but showed no evidence of inflammatory diseases
Synovial vascularity of the metacarpophalangeal joints 1–5 and proximal interphalangeal (PIP) joints 1–5 was measured
Data was analysed with receiver operating characteristic analysis
Based on the results for the total vascularity of 20 finger joints, a cut-off value of 36% was defined as discriminating between RA and NI

Results

The novel PD-US method strongly correlates with the conventional method in terms of RA assessment
The cut-off value was found to be a valuable tool in screening for RA

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