Rapidly Destructive Osteoarthritis of the Hip: MR Imaging Findings

OBJECTIVE: The aim of our study was to describe the MR imaging findings in patients with rapidly destructive osteoarthritis of the hip. CONCLUSION: The key MR imaging features of rapidly destructive hip osteoarthritis include joint effusion (100%), bone marrow edemalike pattern in the femoral head and neck (100%) or acetabulum (83%) or both, femoral head flattening (92%), and cystlike subchondral defects (83%). Additional findings are low-signal-intensity lines (33%) in the femoral epiphysis, bandlike areas of low signal intensity in the upper pole of the femoral head (8%), and focal signal abnormalities in the adjacent soft tissues (33%) on short tau inversion recovery MR images, fat-suppressed T2-weighted MR images, and fat-suppressed gadolinium-enhanced T1-weighted MR images.