Upcoming Events
Log In
Pricing
Free Trial

Watch this case review for free!

HIDE
PrevNext

0:00

Here's a 68-year-old male.

0:02

Sixty eight.

0:04

Pain for a month.

0:06

Do 68-year-olds get instability?

0:08

Are they moving their arm enough to get it?

0:10

Of course, they are.

0:12

This patient plays golf, and he's got pain

0:15

in the mid to latter portion of his golf

0:17

swing, and he's got good reason for it.

0:20

The first thing you do is you look

0:21

at the anatomy on the T1-weighted.

0:24

Bone, fat-weighted sequence, and you see the

0:27

patient has a goatee or a goat-beard deformity.

0:29

There's glenohumeral arthropathy.

0:32

This patient complains of inability

0:35

to complete his golf swing.

0:37

His backswing is diminished.

0:39

His follow-through is diminished.

0:41

So, in some respects, he's got decreased range of motion.

0:44

Why?

0:45

This spur is inhibiting his range of motion.

0:49

So, it is not uncommon for you to hear, especially in

0:53

middle-aged and elderly patients, or in individuals who

0:57

are young and are guarding the shoulder, that even though

0:59

they have instability, they have decreased range of motion.

1:03

This is a very counterintuitive clinical concept.

1:09

Let's look at the sequela of this

1:13

patient's instability on MR imaging.

1:17

The first thing you might notice in the

1:18

axial projection is we've got a wave.

1:22

The wave is out, the wave is in, the wave is out again.

1:25

In other words, an undulating glenoid.

1:28

There's glenoid remodeling, yes, with arthrosis, penetrating

1:32

erosions, bone hibernation, and dark signal sclerosis.

1:36

But look at that posterior labrum.

1:38

It is macerated into many little pieces.

1:44

There's not a nice tight attachment

1:47

between it and the glenoid.

1:49

A little bit of periosteal stripping.

1:53

There's a little bit of redundancy of the capsule.

1:58

And as a byproduct of all these things.

2:01

Incongruity of the head and the

2:03

cup, and these are stabilizers.

2:05

Yes, the cup and its rims are passive stabilizers.

2:10

Loss of the labral mechanism.

2:14

Capsular irregularity and plasticity.

2:17

The humeral head is sagging posteriorly.

2:21

So there's multi-directional micro-instability

2:24

with the posterior geography predominating.

2:27

How do I know it's multi-directional?

2:29

Because other directions are involved.

2:33

Let's look at the anterior inferior labrum.

2:36

The labrum is there, it's a little bit swollen,

2:39

there's a small pseudocyst right here, which

2:42

suggests that this is being impacted by some

2:45

other structure, perhaps the coracoid, an

2:47

external rotation, but look at your subscapularis.

2:51

There's an intrasubstance abnormality of your

2:54

subscapularis, and have a look at that biceps.

2:57

Big, fat, gray biceps.

3:00

Let's go down and look at the biceps again.

3:02

Biceps dark, biceps fat and gray, with deficiency of

3:09

the medial transverse ligament, which should insert

3:11

firmly right there, transverse ligament made up of the

3:14

coracohumeral ligament in part, should insert right

3:17

there, tamp down with the subscapularis, and prevent

3:21

the biceps from coming out prematurely, which it is,

3:24

it's medialized, and being injured, and resulting

3:28

in tendinosis, an intrasubstance, partial thickness.

3:32

Chronic hypertrophic tear.

3:34

So we have an anterior problem.

3:36

The entire anterior capsule is diffusely swollen.

3:40

There are innumerable pseudocysts in the front

3:43

from coracoid abutment and internal rotation.

3:46

There are innumerable pseudocysts in the back from

3:51

internal impingement and abduction and internal rotation.

3:55

The so-called A bear position.

3:57

And part of the triad of internal impingement is penetrating

4:02

pseudocysts, labral fraying, and even a slap lesion.

4:08

And this patient has a slap lesion.

4:10

The third part of the triad, by the way, is

4:12

infraspinatus tendinopathy, and tendinosis.

4:16

So it goes labral tear, with or without cysts, pseudocysts

4:20

in the humeral head, infraspinatus tendinopathy.

4:23

Do we have infraspinatus tendinopathy?

4:25

We sure do.

4:26

Bart Simpson's hair is on fire.

4:28

It's too bright.

4:30

And the pseudocysts.

4:31

And the labral tear with a nice, large

4:35

saddlebag set of paralabral cysts.

4:39

Let's bring down our water-weighted

4:40

image in the coronal projection.

4:43

Here is our paralabral saddlebag

4:47

pseudocyst arising from our labral tear.

4:50

We've already seen our posterior labral pathology.

4:55

We've already seen our posterior humeral head sagging.

4:59

We've already seen failure of the medial

5:01

biceps pulley mechanism at the junction of

5:04

the subscapularis and the transverse humeral

5:07

ligament, resulting in injury to the biceps.

5:10

Weightlifter, 60 plus years old, multi

5:14

directional instability, multiple

5:16

problems, all co-mingled, all co-related.

Report

Faculty

Stephen J Pomeranz, MD

Chief Medical Officer, ProScan Imaging. Founder, MRI Online

ProScan Imaging

Tags

Trauma

Shoulder

Musculoskeletal (MSK)

MSK

MRI

Bone & Soft Tissues

© 2024 Medality. All Rights Reserved.

Contact UsTerms of UsePrivacy Policy