Treatable chondral injuries in the knee: Frequency of associated focal subchondral edema

OBJECTIVE. In the knee, chondral flaps and fractures are radiographically o ccult articular cartilage injuries that can mimic meniscal tears clinically ; once correctly diagnosed, these injuries can be treated surgically We inv estigated an associated MR imaging finding-focal subchondral bone edema-in a series of surgically proven lesions. MATERIALS AND METHODS. Two musculoskeletal radiologists retrospectively rev iewed the MR studies of 18 knees with arthroscopically proven treatable car tilage infractions, noting articular surface defects and associated subchon dral bone edema; subchondral edema was defined as focal regions of high sig nal intensity in the bone immediately underlying an articular surface defec t on a T2-weighted or short inversion time inversion recovery (STIR) image. RESULTS. The first observer saw focal subchondral edema deep relative to a cartilage surface defect in 15 (83%) of the 18 cases; in two additional cas es a surface defect was seen without underlying edema. The second observer identified 13 knees (72%) with surface defects and associated subchondral e dema and three with chondral surface defects and no associated edema. Subch ondral edema was seen more frequently on fat-suppressed images and on STIR images than non-fat-suppressed images. CONCLUSION. Focal subchondral edema is commonly visible on MR images of tre atable, traumatic cartilage defects in the knee; this MR finding may prove to be an important clue to assist in the detection of these traumatic chond ral lesions.