Greg Couzens, Nick Daunt, Mark Ross, Ross Crawford

MRI is being increasingly utilised to define pathology and guide treatment in patients presenting with wrist pain. The clinical relevance of MRI identified or confirmed pathology has not been established, and the prevalence of asymptomatic MRI pathology is not known.

Twenty volunteers with no previous wrist injury or symptoms underwent bilateral MRI wrist studies. The scans were reported by an experienced musculoskeletal radiologist and an experienced wrist surgeon, with a consensus reached on each report.

The results found that there were a significant number of positive MRI findings per wrist. We concluded that MRI findings need to be correlated closely with clinical examination and history, before making recommendations for treatment.

This study has been published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Surgery. Results from this study can be found 📄here.