Enthesitis – a review on the ultrasonographic assessment

Abstract

The potential benefit gained from ultrasonography examination of the enthesis been extensively studied. Enthesitis plays a key role in pathogenesis of spondyloarthritis and thus, understanding the diagnostic and therapeutic implications has shaped the way clinicians view its importance in clinical practice. The development of high-quality imaging technologies offered a great opportunity to obtain more detailed analysis of the enthesis structure and also differentiate acute from chronic lesions. Several taskforce groups, including OMERACT, highlighted the diagnostic performance of ultrasonography for the detection of enthesitis. Panels of experts have also provided consensus-based definitions of elementary lesions in order to standardize the approach of US-defined enthesitis. Enthesitis is considered one of the main clinical domains in psoriatic arthritis patients and several trials have adopted its use as a potential outcome measure, although research carried out until now, still lacks uniformity between methods used to assess enthesitis. Multiple semiquantitative scoring systems of enthesitis using ultrasonography have been developed in the last two decades and these may provide a more standardized approach in future research.