A Comparison of Conventional Ultrasonography and Arthrosonography in the Assessment of Cuff Integrity after Rotator Cuff Repair

Because the integrity of repaired rotator cuff is closely re-lated to the functional results of patients,1-3) its accurate de-termination can have important implications for the man-agement of postoperative shoulder pain. There are several methods to evaluate rotator cuff integrity before and after repair including ultrasonography,4-9) multidetector com-puted tomographic arthrography (CTA),1,10) magnetic res-onance imaging (MRI),1,2,11-13) magnetic resonance arthrog-raphy (MRA),14) and second look arthroscopy.5) Of them, Background: This study was designed to perform conventional ultrasonography, magnetic resonance arthrography (MRA) and ar-throsonography exams after rotator cuff repair to compare the results of conventional ultrasonography and arthrosonography with those of MRA as the gold standard. Methods: We prospectively studied 42 consecutive patients (14 males, 28 females; average age, 59.4 years) who received ar-throscopic rotator cuff repair due to full-thickness tears of the supraspinatus tendon from 2008 to 2010. The integrity assessment of the repaired rotator cuff was performed 6 months postoperatively using conventional ultrasonography, MRA, and arthrosonog