Objective: Physeal injuries in childhood may produce irreversible damage to the growing cells, resulting in growth disturbance. The aim of this study is compare conventional radiography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the assessment of distal radius epiphyseal and physeal injury.
Methods: 31 cases with distal radius trauma were examined with conventional radiography and MRI. One blinded experienced radiologists and one blinded experienced specialist in orthopedics separately evaluated the results.
Results: The main age of our patient was 11.74±2.98 years. The results of MRI showed 90.32% injury in all patients whiles conventional radiography showed 64.51% injuries (P=0.014). In survey the physeal injury by conventional radiography we have 6 Salter–Harris II fractures. Meanwhile, the MRI showed 9 physeal injuries that included 6 Salter–Harris II fracture and 3 other fracture with physeal injury (all of them had distal radius microfracture with mild physeal injury) (P>0.05). In patients that conventional radiography showed they were normally, MRI showed 4 Bone Bruising and 4 microfracture. The other results were similar. The sensitivity, specificity, Positive predictive value, negative predictive value and total accuracy of conventional radiography in diagnosis of physeal injury were 66.6%, 100%, 100%, 88%, 90.32%.
Conclusion: our study showed MRI and conventional radiography had almost similar power to diagnosis growth plate injuries in distal radius trauma. When we considering high cost of MRI, it’s seems that conventional radiography was beneficial than MRI to use in distal radius injury.