Objectives: Osteoarticular pathology has benefited greatly from MRI. This modality was only recently introduced in our country and its implantation is still rare. The objective of this study was to evaluate the practice of MRI of osteoarticular system in Douala General Hospital. Method: It was a cross-sectional descriptive study during a five-month period from May to September 2017 involving all patients referred to the Imaging Department of the Douala General Hospital for osteoarticular MRI. All the patients were scanned using an open-sided mid-field MRI APERTO LUCENT (0.4 T) using axial, sagittal and coronal slices in T1-weighted, T2-weighted proton density. T1 gadolinium or water-fat saturation (WFS) slices were obtained after injection of a contrast agent (Dotarem). Collected data were analyzed using SPSS v20 and Microsoft Excel 2010 softwares. Results: 34 patients were enrolled in this study; osteoarticular MRI accounted for 12% of the activity behind MRI of the spine (40.4%) and the brain (42.5%). The mean age of patients was 37.6 ± 13.1 years with extremes between 6 and 61 years. There was male predominance with a sex ratio of 1.83. Trauma (44.2%) and pain (42.1%) were the most common indications. MRI of the lower limb (85.3%) and more particularly of the knee (68.9%) was more frequently performed than that of the upper limb (14.7%). Orthopedic surgeons (38.2%) and rheumatologists (26.5%) were the main referral physician. 73.5% of request's forms did not conform to the eight compliance criteria according to the recommendations of French National Agency for Accreditation and Health Evaluation. Most of the examinations (94.1%) were performed without the injection of contrast agent (Dotarem). 97% of MRI was pathological. Traumatic pathologies (39.4%
Objectives: The objective of this study was to evaluate the interest of MRI in the diagnosis of spinal disorders in our area. Method: It was a cross-sectional, descriptive and retrospective study during a nine-month period from January to September 2015 involving all patients who performed a spine MRI in the Imaging Department of Douala General Hospital. All the patients were scanned using an open-sided mid-field MRI APERTO LUCENT (0.4 T) using sagittal and axial slices in T1-weighted and T2-weighted FSE spin echo and STIR sagittal slices and T1 gado. Water-fat saturation (WFS) slices were obtained after injection of a contrast agent. All the data collected were analyzed using Microsoft Excel 2010 and Sphinx version 4.0. Results: 220 patients were recruited. The mean age was 46.34. There was male predominance with a sex ratio of 1.5. The main indication was lumbar spine pain (36.8%), followed by cervical spine pain, sensory and motor disorder. Neurosurgeon (33.6%), neurologist (23.1%) and rheumatologist (13.6%) were the main referring physicians. The lumbar spine was the most explored (53.2%). Discal hernia (46.6%), arthrosis (31.3%) and degenerative disc disease (25.5%) were the main observed lesion. Infectious disorders were mainly represented by spondylitis (5%); Traumatic disorders by spondylolisthesis (8.6%). Tumors were mainly metastasis (4%). 21.3% of MRI were normal. MRI-clinical concordance was 78.63%. Conclusion: MRI allows an accurate assessment of spinal and spinal cord pathologies without exposing patients to radiation. It helped to confirm or refute the diagnosis suspected by clinics. However, its availability is limited in our country.
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