[Anatomo-pathological study of enthesopathies in inflammatory spondylarthropathies]

The authors report the pathological aspects observed in three peripheral entheses (spine of the scapula, talus and patella) of inflammatory spondylo-arthropathy (ISP). A mononuclear inflammatory infiltrate, more or less important, is found in all cases corroborating the rare findings in the literature. Until now, the anatomical study of ISPs was uneasy because of the difficult approach of the sacro-iliac joint and the spine due to their anatomical location. The present study, in spite of the small number of reported cases, proposes to show that inflammatory lesions may be studied in peripheral entheses which are more accessible to biopsies, and suggest the development, in the future, of a more minutious study of the different varieties of ISP.