Knee and shoulder MRI before radiography adds to patient care costs.
Performing MRI before radiography on patients presenting with shoulder or knee pain, or with tendonitis, represents a potential gap in care, according to an article published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.
Current Appropriate Criteria (AC) state that knee and shoulder pain should be first assessed with radiography before moving ahead to more costly imaging studies, except in cases of significant trauma to the knee.
Researchers from Massachusetts, Illinois, Missouri and California undertook a retrospective study to determine how often MRIs were performed before radiographs for knee or shoulder pain, and the associated costs. MRI use before radiography was also compared between patients who were on Medicare and those who were commercially insured.
The researchers found that approximately 28 percent of all knee MRIs, and 35 percent to 37 percent of all shoulder MRIs were performed without recent prior radiographs. “The MRIs performed without prior radiographs among patients with knee pain accounted for spending of $1,089,704 in the Medicare population and $4,439,394 in the commercially insured population, whereas among those with nontraumatic knee pain, the corresponding expenditure was $1,011,136 and $3,891,560, respectively,” the authors wrote. “The MRI exams performed without prior radiographs among those with shoulder pain or tendonitis accounted for spending of $1,773,486 in the Medicare population and $4,172,714 among the commercially insured, whereas among those with nontraumatic shoulder pain or tendonitis, the corresponding expenditure was $1,082,224 and $2,839,312, respectively.”
The researchers concluded that the use of MRI before radiography for knee and shoulder pain “represents a potential gap in care and should be considered as an area for establishment of performance measures.”
FDA Clears Virtually Helium-Free 1.5T MRI System from Siemens Healthineers
June 26th 2025Offering a cost- and resource-saving DryCool magnet technology, the Magnetom Flow.Ace MRI system reportedly requires 0.7 liters of liquid helium for cooling over the lifetime of the device in contrast to over 1,000 liters commonly utilized with conventional MRI platforms.
Multinational Study Reaffirms Value of Adjunctive AI for Prostate MRI
June 16th 2025The use of adjunctive AI in biparametric prostate MRI exams led to 3.3 percent and 3.4 percent increases in the AUC and specificity, respectively, for clinically significant prostate cancer (csPCa) in a 360-person cohort drawn from 53 facilities.
FDA Clears Enhanced MRI-Guided Laser Ablation System
June 5th 2025An alternative to an open neurosurgical approach, the Visualase V2 MRI-Guided Laser Ablation System reportedly utilizes laser interstitial thermal therapy (LITT) for targeted soft tissue ablation in patients with brain tumors and focal epilepsy.