Diagnostic Value Of Real-time Tissue Elastography On Skeletal Muscle Inflammation Induced By Injection Prostaglandin-E₂

Objective and significancesSkeletal muscle injury is a common type of injury, in injured skeletal muscle, the inflammation response starts rapidly after trauma, and causes symptoms that include muscle pain, swelling, fever, and loss of mobility. How to identify latitude and extent of lesion early and precisely is useful for prognosis and improving quality of life of the patient. MRI can display the lesion of muscle accurately, but it is not favourable for the follow-up of treatment and effect because of expensive. Ultrasound can assess of muscle dynamicly, and to provide reliable morphology information on muscle lesion, but the conventional two-dimensional ultrasound often can not clearly show the lesions and the scope of its involved in early muscle diseases such as inflammatory lesions. Ultrasound elastography is a new diagnostic modality, it has been widely used in many areas since it has been proposed, but it is rarely reported in the field of muscle lesions. Our research is to evaluate the value of real-time tissue elastography (RTE) on skeletal muscle injections of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) in the skeletal muscle of rabbits, in order to provide basic information for research to skeletal muscle lesions in future.MethodsNew Zealand white rabbits (n=20) were injected in the right hind gastrocnemius with PGE2 to induce inflammation models; Intramuscular injections were received weekly. The contralateral gastrocnemius was used as the control. The RTE scanning was performed 1st week,2nd week,5th week after injection respectively, intramuscular injections were five times altogether. Muscle biopsies were done after scanning. Elastograms and conventional two-dimensional sonograms were in contrast with the pathological results. ResultsAccording to the RTE evaluation system, there were 19 score 1 and 0 for score 0; 13 score 1 and seven for score 2 after 2 weeks; 2 score 2 and 18 for score 3 after 5 weeks.In control group,20 were score 0.1 week,2 weeks and 5 weeks later, the differences between injection side and normal side were statistically significant (P＜0.05). There was no significantly statistical difference in injection side between 1st week and 2nd week after injection of PGE2 (P>0.05). The difference between 1st week and 5th week,2nd week and 5th week in injection side were statistically significant (P＜0.05)ConclusionsThe animal experiment reveals that RTE can find the changes earlier than conventional two-dimensional ultrasound in detection lesions, and provide a new means to evaluate the relative hardness of lesions objectively. The technology can provide effective help for improving the early diagnosis of skeletal muscle inflammation.