The effect of shear wave elastography in the diagnosis of delaminated partial-thickness rotator cuff tears.

Aim: To assess the effectiveness of shear wave elastography (SWE) in diagnosing delaminated partial-thickness rotator cuff tears (DPT-RCT).

Material and methods: A retrospective study was carried out on 137 patients with DPT-RCT. The study included complete clinical data, including the images of conventional ultrasound (US), SWE, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and shoulder arthroscopic surgery. The features of US, SWE, and MRI were evaluated. The study analysed the Shear-Wave Velocity (SWV) among three types of DPT-RCT, and between the regions of tears, normal contralateral, and affected unilateral supraspinatus tendon. Furthermore, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were evaluated.

Results:  The SWE detection rate was significantly higher (91.2%) compared to US (73.7%) and MRI (87.6%) for the overall diagnosis of DPT-RCT. Similarly, SWE yielded higher rates of detection for types 1 (89.5%) and 2 (92.3%) of DPT-RCT as compared to US (71.7%, 69.2%) and MRI (81.6%, 94.9%), respectively. However, there was no significant difference in the accuracy of diagnosing type 3 among the three methods. The SWV of the 137 supraspinatus tendon tears was 3.64±0.60 m/s, which was higher than that of the normal supraspinatus tendon (2.43±0.47 m/s, p<0.01) as well as the region of tears (1.61±0.54 m/s, p<0.01). Nevertheless, there was no significant difference in SWV among the three types of DPT-RCT. The cutoff thresholds of SWV for identifying normal tendon from DPT-RCT and for identifying DPT-RCT from the region of tears were 2.96m/s and 2.39m/s, respectively.

Conclusions: SWE with SWV can provide both quantitative and qualitative diagnostic information for DPT-RCT, which can be used as a crucial supplement imaging method.