Effect of surgeon-sonographer interaction on ultrasound diagnosis of rotator cuff tears: a five-year cohort study in 775 shoulders.

Background: Ultrasonography for the diagnosis of rotator cuff tears has been a topic of debate for years. The literature shows promising results for the diagnostic utility of ultrasonography for rotator cuff tears. This study assessed the effect of a surgeon-sonographer interaction on the ability of ultrasonography to predict the presence or absence of rotator cuff tears.

Methods: This study was a temporal cohort analysis of 775 patients to detect the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasonography at predicting a rotator cuff tear. The surgeon-sonographer interaction had three components: (1) presence of an ultrasound machine and ultrasonographer within a shoulder clinic, (2) the ultrasonographer attends shoulder operations, (3) and the ultrasonographer reviews patients preoperatively and postoperatively. Comparisons of 2 variables-presence and size of a tear-were made between the preoperative ultrasonographic findings with arthroscopic findings (gold standard).

Results: The diagnostic utility for the detection of rotator cuff tears by ultrasonography at the start of the study was 93% sensitive and 68% specific, and at the end of the study was 99% sensitive and 93% specific. There was an improvement in the correlation of the ability to estimate the size of rotator cuff tears from ultrasonography to surgery in both full- and partial-thickness tears.

Conclusions: The surgeon-sonographer interaction improved the diagnostic utility of an office-based ultrasonographer over time, particularly with respect to the overall accuracy of ultrasonography for the detection of rotator cuff tears and for the ability to predict the size of full- and partial-thickness rotator cuff tears.