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| The diagnostic value of MRI in atypical elbow injury in children |
| LIN Fei-fei, HAN Jing-ming, XIANG Kui, SUN Jie, CAO Wei-guo, WANG Hong-wei |
| Department of Radiology, Shenzhen Children’s Hospital, Shenzhen Guangdong 518026, China |
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Abstract Objective: To approach the diagnostic value and characteristic appearance of MRI in atypical elbow injury in children. Methods: To analyze MRI appearance of 41 children who were suspected of having atypical elbow injury. All patients performed lateral and postero-antarior position of the elbow X-ray films and 3 cases performed CT scan. Results: In 41 cases, 31(75.6%) were diagnosed as atypical children elbow injury by MR. Among patients who had no fracture on X-ray or CT examination, epiphyseal injury was found in 7 cases, 3 cases had articular cartilage fracture; bone contusion in 18 cases; none had tendon injury. On the X-ray or CT image, 6 cases had a clear diagnosis of fracture but can not show articular surface involvement. MR confirmed the diagnosis of X-ray or CT image, and 3 patients of them had atypical fracture. Three cases had simple fracture without atypical injury, conservative treatment was accepted by gypsum fixation; 5 cases only had simple soft tissue injury or joint effusion, no treatment was needed. Four cases had two fractures at the same time. Two cases had suspicious fracture on X-ray but MR explicitly excluded bone injury and only had soft tissue swelling. Conclusion: MRI is the first choice for examination of children’s elbow atypical injury and can clearly show the location, nature and extent of children’s elbow atypical injury which is very helpful to the diagnosis.
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Received: 10 August 2009
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2010, Vol. 21 
