[The diagnostic value of nuclear magnetic resonance tomography in Sjögen's disease]

Sjögren's syndrome is characterised by xerostomia, xerophthalmia and recurrent parotid swelling. There is a high coincidence with rheumatoid diseases. A variety of clinical and laboratory parameters offers important information for diagnosis, but none of them is specific for this disease. 36 patients with clinical diagnosis of Sjögren's syndrome were examined in a prospective study to evaluate the diagnostic significance of this technique. 34 patients showed an inhomogeneous, nodular pattern in the parotid gland. The signal intensity was very high, especially in the T2-weighted sequences. There was a significant correlation of the radiologic changes with the course of the disease. Four patients with the clinical diagnosis of sialadenosis demonstrated bilateral enlarged glands with a homogeneous signal pattern. Patients with acute purulent parotitis demonstrated enlargement of the gland without an alteration in the signal pattern. Patients with chronic recurrent parotitis and patients with radiogenic sialadenitis showed little inhomogeneous increase of signal intensity. Our results indicate that MRI is presently the radiological method of choice in the evaluation of Sjögren's syndrome.