Abstract
Since 2000, we have performed ultrasonography (US) on 57 shoulders of patients who underwent shoulder US prior to surgery and arthoroscopy. We investigated the type (size) of rotator cuff tear from US findings. Aloca SSD-650CL (7.5 MHz prove) was used for this study. We determined complete tear in findings with defects, thinning, nonvisualization, and low echo area in full layer, and partial tear in findings with partial defects, low echo area, and heterogeneous internal echo pattern. The correspondence ratio of US findings to those in surgery resulted in an accurancy of 81.6% for complete tears, but the correspondence ratio for each type was 40.4%. For medium and large tears, we diagnosed the type of cuff tear from the findings of US, lower grade than finding in surgery. It was difficult to discriminate small tears from partial tears, but examination of US was found to be useful for determining the method of surgery.
