Background In sports medicine, MRI has emerged as a noninvasive diagnostic technique for assessing various injuries. T2 mapping of articular cartilage can be used to identify early subclinical cartilage affection. Aim To analyze the effectiveness of MRI in diagnosing various knee joint ailments in children and teenagers. Patients and methods 50 children and adolescents, both sexes, aged between 6 and 18 years, complaining of knee joint injuries connected to sports, participated in this prospective research. MRI was performed on all children and adolescents. Results In comparing arthroscopies and surgery results to MRI findings, regarding anterior cruciate ligament injury, out of 18 MRI reported cases of anterior cruciate ligament tear, there were 16 true positive and 2 true negative. Only 3 cases of posterior cruciate ligament injury were evaluated with 100% sensitivity and specificity. Regarding medial meniscus injury, it has a sensitivity and specificity of 87.5 and 90.6%, respectively, compared with lateral meniscus sensitivity of 69.2% and specificity of 97.2%, 4 false negative cases of lateral meniscus root tear. Adding the T2 mapping sequence to conventional MRI increased its sensitivity to detect early focal cartilage affection from 50 to 85.7%. Conclusion MRI was proven to be the optimal imaging modality to evaluate different patterns on knee joint sports injury as it detects not only the type but also the extent of injury and thus predicts the proper timing for athletes to return to play and guide sports regimens modification.
Elagan et al. (Wed,) studied this question.