[Utility of musculoskeletal ultrasonography in rheumatic diseases].

Musculoskeletal ultrasonography (MSUS) possessing grey-scale and Doppler mode has become an established imaging modality for the diagnosis and follow up of patients with rheumatic diseases. Among rheumatic diseases, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has been recognized as a good disorder to examine the joint inflammation as known synovitis. Early diagnosis and therapeutic intervention have given good outcomes to patients with RA. The 2010 RA classification criteria was reported and early arthritis patients has been diagnosed as RA, although the diagnostic and discriminative abilities of the 2010 criteria are not well known in Japanese. In the new criteria, synovitis is detected as joint swelling or tenderness on physical examination. Now we have expected if MSUS were used for detection of true synovitis, because we have confirmed that sensitivity of synovitis detection by MSUS was superior to that by physical examination.