Diagnosis of meniscal and cruciate ligament tears using MRI. Evaluation of two scanning techniques.

The accurate diagnosis of meniscal and cruciate ligament tears is essential for proper management of knee injuries. In recent years, magnetic resonance imaging has been increasingly used to diagnose knee pathology. Several articles have documented the accuracy of MRI, but conflicting results have been reported. We present a series of 50 consecutive patients who underwent both MRI and complete arthroscopy. We tested two different scanning protocols and found the higher-resolution scanning protocol to be more accurate, resulting in fewer discrepancies between the results of MRI and arthroscopy, which we used as the standard for comparing the MRI interpretations. Magnetic resonance imaging is an important diagnostic tool in orthopedic practice. It is available, accurate, and well-accepted by patients. However, as demonstrated by the results of this study, the accuracy of MRI is highly dependent upon the scanning protocol used.