The Difference in Diagnostic Performance for Detection of Supraspinatus Tendon Tears by Adding Angled Oblique Sagittal Plane Image to the Routine Shoulder MRI

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to determine whether adding an angled oblique sagittal plane to the routine shoulder MRI improves the diagnostic performance in the evaluation of supraspinatus tendon tears with arthroscopic correlation. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study included 121 patients who had a shoulder MRI followed by arthroscopy. Two radiologists separately evaluated the supraspinatus tendon for tears on shoulder MRI either with or without the angled oblique sagittal images. Arthroscopy was used as the reference standard. The sensitivity and specificity for diagnosing supraspinatus tendon tears were calculated and compared by using McNemar test. Interobserver and intertechnique variability in the interpretation of supraspinatus tendon tears were calculated as a kappa value. RESULTS: Adding the angled oblique sagittal images to the standard shoulder MRI showed improvement in the sensitivity for diagnosing full-thickness supraspinatus tendon tears and also in the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy for the detection of partial-thickness tears. However, there was no statistically significant difference in all of them between with and without the angled set. Interobserver agreement was substantial to almost perfect and intertechnique agreement was moderate. CONCLUSION: Adding an angled oblique sagittal plane image to the routine shoulder MRI showed no significantly different diagnostic performance in detecting the partial- and full-thickness supraspinatus tendon tears, compared to MRI without angled oblique sagittal plane.