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Digital tomosynthesis as a new diagnostic tool for assessing of chronic gout arthritic feet and ankles: comparison of plain radiography and computed tomography

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Abstract

This aimed to compare the three radiographic methods of digital tomosynthesis (DT), plain radiography, and computed tomography (CT) for evaluating changes in feet of patients with chronic gouty arthritis. Two independent radiologists read the plain radiography, DT, and CT images of 30 male patients with gout. The degrees of erosion and joint space narrowing were scored using the Sharp–van der Heijde scoring method in 18 foot joints, which consisted of four proximal interphalangeal and one interphalangeal joint of the first toe, five metatarsophalangeal, five tarsometatarsal, and three naviculo-cuneiform joints of the foot. DT showed high reproducibility [0.929 for intraobserver intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and 0.838 for interobserver ICC]. DT showed similar results to those of CT and superior results to those of plain radiography for evaluating radiographic damage [mean total score, 8.5 ± 14.6 (±standard deviation) for plain radiography, 12.9 ± 12.4 for DT, and 12.6 ± 11.2 for CT]. This study showed that DT is a good method for evaluating radiographic changes in patients with gout. Further research is needed to apply DT to actual clinical settings.

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Author notes

  1. Chang-Nam Son and Yoonah Song are contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Rheumatology, Department of Internal Medicine, School of Medicine and Institute for Medical Science, Keimyung University, Daegu, Republic of Korea

    Chang-Nam Son & Sang-Hyon Kim

  2. Department of Radiology, Hanyang University Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Yoonah Song & Seunghun Lee

  3. Department of Rheumatology, Hanyang University Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, 222-1, Wangsimni-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Jae-Bum Jun

Authors
  1. Chang-Nam Son
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  2. Yoonah Song
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  3. Sang-Hyon Kim
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  4. Seunghun Lee
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  5. Jae-Bum Jun
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jae-Bum Jun.

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Ethics approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board of Hanyang University Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants and confirmed by the board.

Funding

This work was supported by the research fund of Hanyang University (HY-2014).

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Son, CN., Song, Y., Kim, SH. et al. Digital tomosynthesis as a new diagnostic tool for assessing of chronic gout arthritic feet and ankles: comparison of plain radiography and computed tomography. Clin Rheumatol 36, 2095–2100 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-017-3710-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-017-3710-x

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