抄録
Purposes : Osteomyelitis of the jaw is an inflammatory disease of the bone marrow of the jaw bone secondary to an abscessed tooth or postoperative infection. Osteomyelitis is more common in the mandible than in the maxilla. Therefore, predicting the prognosis of osteomyelitis of the mandible from imaging is a challenge for clinicians. The purpose of this study was to assess the imaging findings of osteomyelitis of the mandible using diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and predict the prognosis.
Material and Methods : This study included 61 patients with osteomyelitis of the mandible (13 men and 48 women, mean age : 68.8 years) who underwent MRI. The apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) value of the mandibular bone marrow was measured on the ADC map. Statistical analysis was performed using Welch’s t-test, dividing the cases into two groups : a group in which osteomyelitis symptoms persisted for 4 weeks or more and a group in which symptoms improved in less than 4 weeks. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was performed to determine the ability of the ADC value to predict the prognosis of mandibular osteomyelitis.
Results : The mean ADC value of the mandibular bone marrow was 1.377×10−3 mm2/s in the symptom-persisted group and 1.198×10−3 mm2/s in the symptom-improved group. A cutoff value of ＞1.303×10−3 mm2/s was obtained from the ROC curve using the Youden index.
Conclusion : This study suggests that diffusion-weighted MRI can be used to predict the prognosis of osteomyelitis of the mandible.
