Background Bone erosion is a hallmark of inflammatory joint diseases. Its meticulous detection is highly important for correct diagnosis and monitoring of therapy response. Earlier studies showed that musculoskeletal ultrasound (MSUS) has a higher sensitivity than conventional radiography with regards to detection of bone erosions (1) making MSUS more and more popular. The OMERACT ultrasound working group is currently standardizing and validating MSUS as an imaging outcome tool.

Objectives To investigate the ability of MSUS to sensitively and specifically detect bone erosions in a longitudinal setting using HR-pQCT as a gold standard.

Methods This is a sequel study to our 2011 cross-sectional comparative analysis on MSUS and HR-pQCT (2). 4/6 healthy individuals, 6/6 psoriatic arthritis patients and of 10/14 rheumatoid arthritis patients were available for follow-up and received an MSUS and an HR-pQCT scan of the clinically dominant hand. Bone erosions at the radial, palmar, and dorsal sites of the second metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joint, as well as the palmar and dorsal sites of the third and forth MCP joints were assessed for prevalence and severity in MSUS and by HR-pQCT. Afterwards, data were compared to the 2011-dataset. MSUS was graded as described earlier (2).

Results Datasets without follow-up from the baseline cohort were eliminated. Sensitivity of MSUS in comparison to HR-pQCT regarding correct detection of erosions was 95% and specificity was 75%. %. For this analysis, grade 1 lesions were included. At follow-up sensitivity was 86% and specificity 79%. At follow-up, 36 MSUS-lesions were no longer detectable in MSUS; 21/36 were false-positive lesions at baseline. Only one false-positive lesion was detected at both time points. One new lesion was detected by MSUS and confirmed by HR-pQCT. Overall severity of bone erosions regressed in MSUS; these findings were confirmed by HR-pQCT (p=0.04).

Conclusions This is the first study on change of bone erosions over time comparing MSUS and HR-pQCT. MSUS was confirmed being a sensitive imaging tool able to detect changes of erosions over time. Thus, it may be an adept tool to monitor treatment response in inflammatory joint diseases. Correct identification of bone erosions and differentiation from physiological vessel channels requires knowledge of predilection sites of erosions and physiological cortical breaks; this might aid to further increase the diagnostic value of MSUS.

References

1. Wakefield RJ et al. The value of sonography in the detection of bone erosions in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a comparison with conventional radiography. Arthritis Rheum. 2000.

2. Finzel S et al. A detailed comparative study of high-resolution ultrasound and micro-computed tomography for detection of arthritic bone erosions. Arthritis Rheum. 2011.

References

Disclosure of Interest None declared