MR diagnosis of meniscal tears: analysis of causes of errors.

Abstract

Using conventional coronal and sagittal spin-echo MR imaging, we could not identify 21 (6%) of the 333 meniscal tears, even in retrospect. In addition, subtle findings that are equivocal for a tear may still make MR diagnosis of every torn meniscus difficult even for experienced radiologists. Unavoidable false-positive diagnoses due to healed tears or tears missed at arthroscopy are an infrequent problem occurring in only 1.5% of the original 800 menisci evaluated with MR imaging.