Abstract
Objective: The study was designed to observe the role of SPECT bone imaging for the detection of meniscal tears.

Methods: This study was conducted at NORI hospital Islamabad in collaboration with radiology and orthopedic departments of leading hospitals of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Radionuclide SPECT bone imaging with Tc-99m MDP was performed on the knees of 35 patients with suspected meniscal injuries. After SPECT scanning, the patients had an MRI scan followed by arthroscopy, the gold standard for diagnosis of meniscal injuries. The Fischer's Exact Test was applied to compare the results of M.R.I with arthroscopy. p-value < 0.05 was considered as significant

Results: The results of SPECT scanning were comparable to MRI imaging in the diagnosis of meniscal tears. The sensitivity was 88% for SPECT scanning and 80% for MRI in diagnosis of meniscal tears on the basis of arthroscopy results. The specificity for MR.I and SPECT was similar for the two diagnostic moalities. However, the accuracy of SPECT scanning was found to be 80.6% compared with 74.2% for MRI for accurate for diagnosis of meniscal tears.

Conclusion: There was insignificant difference between the results of MRI and arthroscopy, and SPECT and arthroscopy (p-value 0.161 and 0.069 respectively). The overall results reveal that SPECT scanning can be very useful in diagnosis of meniscal tears.