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Ultrasound did not support clinical findings in patients with fibromyalgia
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Ultrasound did not detect significant abnormalities in patients with fibromyalgia in correlation to clinical findings in a recent study.
The multicenter study included 64 patients (mean age, 54.6 years; 40 women) with fibromyalgia (mean duration, 92.9 months). Patients underwent clinical assessments of the presence or absence of pain and tenderness in the hip region; a Lequesne questionnaire estimated severity of hip impairment.
Ultrasound (US) measurements examined the hip joint, trochanteric bursa, ilio-psoas bursa, gluteus tendons and ilio-psoas tendon. Hip joint imaging revealed minimal effusion in 14% of cases. Synovial hypertrophy, bone erosion and intra-articular Doppler signal were not detected through sonography. The gluteus tendon was the most common tendon to show US pathology.
Lequesne questionnaire results revealed that severe to extremely severe impairment was present in at least 29.7% of the patients, with a normal value in 17.2% of patients. US findings were negative in four of the patients with severe to very severe impairment.
“There was a clinical overestimation of inflammatory involvement not borne out by subsequent US examination,” the researchers said. “Due to the relatively small number of patients enrolled in the present study, it is difficult to draw definite conclusions on the prevalence of US findings in [fibromyalgia].
“Since clinical examination may generate frequently false-positive results in patients with [fibromyalgia], the higher specificity of the US findings can be used to confirm hip joint and periarticular soft tissue involvement.”
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