MR arthrography in the evaluation of glenoid labral tears

This paper investigates the clinical usefulness of MR arthrography with intraarticular Gd-DTPA in the evaluation of glenoid labral tears. Forty-seven patients who had clinical symptoms and signs suggesting shoulder instability underwent conventional MR imaging and MR arthrography. Spin-echo T1-weighted and gradient-echo images were obtained in the axial plane before an after intraarticular injection of Gd-DTPA. The surgical findings of glenoidal labra were available in 19 patients. Surgery revealed labral defects in 7 patients, labral detachment in 4, and normal labra in the other 8. All the labral defects were diagnosed with conventional MR imaging and MR arthrography. MR arthrography could demonstrate all the labral detachments, while conventional MR imaging could show labral detachment in only 3 of the 4 cases. Neither conventional MR imaging nor MR arthrography showed larval tears in the 7 patients with normal labra. In the 28 cases without surgical confirmation, MR arthrography showed larval teras in 16 cases while conventional MR imaging showed tears in 13