Ultrasound detects inflamed tendons in thumb

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Tuesday, December 2 | 10:20 a.m.-10:30 a.m. | T3-SSMK04-6 | Room S401

Session-goers will have the opportunity to learn about how ultrasound can be a noninvasive tool to find and characterize De Quervain tenosynovitis (DQT), in which the tendons connecting to the thumb become inflamed.

High-resolution ultrasound found underlying anatomic variations that can predispose to DQT and affect management, presenter Saumya Pandey, MBBS, and colleagues from the Krishna Medical Centre in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India, will show.

The retrospective study included 72 patients with DQT and 24 age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers. The researchers used high-resolution ultrasound with a hockey stick transducer ranging from 6 to 20 MHz.

The team reported significant differences in synovial thickness and A-P pulley diameter between the two groups. Patients with DQT had greater synovial thickness (1.65 mm vs. 0.31 mm; p = 0.0001) and greater diameter (4.04 mm vs. 2.71 mm; p = 0.0001) compared with the healthy volunteers.

For the DQT group, the team also reported significantly higher incidences of accessory tendon slips of the abductor pollicis longus (87.5%) and the presence of septation (80.6%).

“These findings can aid in early diagnosis, guide management decisions, and potentially serve as objective markers for disease severity and response to therapy,” the researchers highlighted in their abstract.

Attend this session to find out what else ultrasound has going for it here.

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