Ultrasonographic evaluation of joint damage in knee osteoarthritis: feature-specific comparisons with conventional radiography

OBJECTIVE The main aim of this study was to compare ultrasonography (US) with conventional radiography for the assessment of joint damage in knee OA. METHODS A total of 166 knees of 84 patients (59 women and 25 men) with primary knee OA were included in this study. The femoral hyaline cartilage of the medial para-patellar aspect and the osteophytes of both the medial and lateral femoral condyle were assessed. The cartilage and osteophytes were both quantitatively and qualitatively assessed. The US assessment was feature-specifically compared with conventional radiography. RESULTS There was a strong correlation between the radiographic medial tibiofemoral narrowing grade and the US medial cartilage grade (rs = 0.7144, 95% CI: 0.6218, 0.7873, P