Two case reports showing a rather striking abnormal finding of unknown origin localized to the cortex of an amputated femur

Radiology Case Reports

article

Masafumi Sakai¹  Hirotaka Mutsuzaki¹  Yukiyo Shimizu¹  Yoshikazu Okamoto¹  Takahito Nakajima¹ 

[1] Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tsukuba

关键词: Amputation;    MRI;    Artificial limb;    Cortex;    Congestion;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.radcr.2022.09.005

学科分类：生物化学工程

来源: University of Washington * Department of Radiology

【 摘 要 】

MRI scans of patients who have undergone leg amputation are rarely obtained; such scans may be performed when a mass is suspected to be related to the amputation or when inflammation (infection) is suspected, but the number of such cases is not large. In this study, however, we encountered 2 very striking cases in which short-tau inversion recovery coronal images taken for different purposes coincidentally showed a diffuse high signal intensity of the residual femoral cortex on the side wearing the artificial limb. Further examination of these images revealed that the superior margins of the artificial limb cup and the abnormal signal were almost identical and that the signal was only observed in the residual femur of the side using the artificial limb, suggesting that the change was caused by artificial limb usage. Despite the difficulty in imaging-pathologic correlation because the patients were still alive, we considered that the high signal was related to the characteristic microanatomy of the bone cortex and the mechanical changes caused by the effects of artificial limb usage on the residual femur. The 2 patients have not shown any specific events since then. Thus, while the residual femoral cortex may show findings of interest, these findings do not seem to require any specific treatment.

【 授权许可】

CC BY|CC BY-NC-ND