THE VALUE OF COMPUTED-TOMOGRAPHY IN THE DIAGNOSIS OF GRATING SCAPULA

Snapping or grating scapula is a condition of the shoulder girdle in w hich the patient complains of pain and an audible snapping sound which may be associated with pain. We evaluated the diagnostic value of the computed tomography (CT) scans using the clinical diagnosis of a grat ing scapula as the gold standard. This retrospective study reports the sensitivity, specificity, likelihood ratio and receiver operator char acteristic curve for the CT scans and the kappa value as a measure of the interobserver agreement. None of the parameters validated the exam ination. We therefore concluded that CT scans are inappropriate for di fferentiation between a grating scapula and a normally functioning sho ulder except in cases where bony abnormalities are present.