Determination of differences in ultrasound parameters for patellar tendons in males with unilateral patellar tendinopathy—An ancillary analysis of data from two randomized controlled trials

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Purpose: To investigate power Doppler (PD) activity and tendon structure (between the injured and contralateral limb) in patients with unilateral patellar tendinopathy (PT) using ultrasonography (US). Secondly, the aim was to determine the intra-rater reliability of the PD activity and tendon structure. Methods: This study analyzed US baseline data from 57 male participants with symptomatic unilateral PT who had been enrolled in one of two randomized clinical trials. Data were analyzed to examine if systematic differences existed between injured and contralateral limbs using Fiji ImageJ. Results: The PD activity of the symptomatic tendon was larger 25.6 (Q1 = 14.9; Q3 = 41.6) mm2 than the asymptomatic 0 (Q1 = 0.0; Q3 = 0.0) mm2 (p < 0.001). There was a significantly greater tendon thickness at the proximal (2.5 mm 95% CI [2.0; 3.0]), mid (0.8 mm 95% CI [0.5; 1.1]), and distal (0.2 mm 95% CI [0.1; 0.4]) part of the tendon for the symptomatic compared to the asymptomatic tendon. Intra-rater reliability for PD activity and tendon structure ranged from moderate-to-excellent (0.74; 0.99). Conclusion: These results provide mean estimates for tendon thickness of symptomatic and asymptomatic tendons, that can be used for clinicians to reliably estimate pathological tendon thickness.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Clinical Ultrasound
ISSN0091-2751
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors. Journal of Clinical Ultrasound published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

    Research areas

  • intra-rater reliability, patellar tendinopathy, tendon, ultrasonography

ID: 387268652