Shear wave elastosonography applied to synovitis: A preliminary study

This study aims to evaluate the utility of shear wave elastography (SWE) in identifying synovitis in patients with a history of arthritis within the diagnosis of a defined rheumatological disease.

We performed B-mode and SWE (ultrasound) on 58 participants divided into two groups: group 1 included 29 patients with confirmed active wrist and/or hand synovitis; group 2 included 29 healthy volunteers without suspicion of synovitis. In a subset of patients (n=8), joint counts and disease evaluations were performed during the elastography to study the correlation between clinical and radiological findings.

The mean maximum kPa value and the average joint kPa value were significantly different between cases and controls: maximum kPa value for cases was 38.14±35.08kPa, while for controls it was 4.72±5.93kPa; average joint value for cases was 29.77±26.07kPa, while for controls it was 4.17±5.22. The most frequent location for joint effusion in both, cases and controls, was the dorsal radiocarpal joint: 41.4% of controls had a mean kPa value of 7.66±5.39kPa, while 58.6% of cases had a mean kPa value of 40.61±40.76kPa (p-value 0.004). kPa values correlated with disease activity measurements in the 8 patients clinically evaluated at the moment of the SWE.

SWE is a promising technique that may have a role in the diagnosis and assessment of synovial inflammatory activity in arthritis.