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Turkish Journal of Medical Sciences

Abstract

Background/aim: Shoulder pain is common and often evaluated with physical examination tests, yet their diagnostic accuracy remains controversial. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to determine the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) rates of clinical test results in patients with shoulder pain, based on ultrasonography (US) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings as reference diagnostic methods.

Materials and methods: The study included 78 patients who had complaints of shoulder pain. All patients underwent physical examinations and specific clinical tests (such as Neer and Jobe tests) to reveal shoulder pathologies, and US and MRI evaluations were performed.

Results: The sensitivity of clinical examination tests for subacromial impingement syndrome, biceps tendinitis and rupture, and infraspinatus tendinitis was higher than US. The specificity of tests for biceps rupture, rotator cuff rupture, infraspinatus and subscapularis tendinitis was higher compared with US. Subacromial impingement tests also showed higher sensitivity compared to MRI. The specificity of tests for acromioclavicular arthritis, biceps rupture, rotator cuff rupture, infraspinatus tendinitis was higher than MRI. Comparison of diagnostic performance with US was significant for subacromial impingement syndrome, acromioclavicular arthritis, biceps tendinitis and rupture, rotator cuff rupture and subscapularis tendinitis (p values; 0.003, 0.003, 0.000, 0.026, 0.000, 0.000, respectively). In contrast, comparison with MRI was significant only for subacromial impingement syndrome (p = 0.026).

Conclusion: Clinical tests have an important place in practice when examining shoulder lesions with their high specificity and sensitivity. Although US reveals many shoulder lesions that cannot be detected by clinical tests or support our examination, MRI maintains its importance in shoulder imaging.

Author ORCID Identifier

YASEMİN TOMBAK: 0000-0003-0065-5376

ÖZGÜR KARAAHMET: 0000-0002-1338-8935

AYŞEGÜL TOMBAK: 0000-0002-5203-5518

ÖMER ATA: 0009-0005-5054-8108

EDA GÜRÇAY: 0000-0002-0118-6527

DOI

10.55730/1300-0144.6065

Keywords

Magnetic resonance imaging, sensitivity, shoulder pain, shoulder-specific tests, specificity, ultrasonography

First Page

1103

Last Page

1112

Publisher

The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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