Quantitative assessment of distal radioulnar joint stability with pressure-monitor ultrasonography

Diagnosing distal radioulnar joint (DRUJ) instability remains a challenge because it relies on a physical examination. Since there is an increasing trend to treat DRUJ instability surgically, it is important to evaluate DRUJ instability accurately. It is known that DRUJ stability is found in the combination of bony anatomy, DRUJ capsule, musculotendinous structures, and ligamentous structures [1‐10]. Because of these complex wrist-stabilizing structures, it is difficult to understand the pathological conditions for each structure.

Generally, DRUJ instability is assessed by several manual stress tests, such as the ballottement test, ulnocarpal stress test, and piano-key test. A previous biomechanical study using cadaver wrists demonstrated that the DRUJ ballottement test was the most reliable for evaluating the instability compared with other manual stress tests [11‐13]. This clinical test evaluates the translation of the distal ulna relative to the distal radius in neutral forearm rotation by applying a dorsovolar shear force. An increased translation in comparison to the healthy side wrist may be caused by pathological conditions such as TFCC injury. Although this assessment can detect gross instability, this is a qualitative and subjective evaluation. Therefore, there are clinical needs to develop a method for the quantitative assessment of DRUJ instability.

There have been several studies for the evaluations of physiological translations for the DRUJ [14‐22]. Some studies evaluated clinical DRUJ instability with computed tomography (CT) [9, 14]. However, these methods cannot evaluate real situations with a dynamic force-displacement relationship. If it were possible to clarify the force-displacement relationship of DRUJ, it would be helpful to understand how much load the joint can withstand, in addition to discriminating pathological conditions quantitatively. It is important to develop a clinical method to evaluate the force-displacement relationship of DRUJ. To quantitatively assess DRUJ stability, a pressure-monitor ultrasound system was developed. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the force-displacement relationship of DRUJ in healthy volunteers and to characterize normal DRUJ stability.

The protocol for this study was reviewed and approved by our Institutional Review Board (No17-26). Nine wrists of nine asymptomatic volunteers (nine males; age range 23–35, mean age 28.0 years) were evaluated by a pressure-monitor ultrasound system. Volunteers were excluded if they had a history of previous wrist trauma and wrist pain. Written consents were obtained from all study participants. All subjects were confirmed to have no instability in DRUJ with the ballottement test.

The changes in radioulnar distances are shown in Fig. 4a. The changes of the ulna distances were 0.25 ± 0.29 mm, 0.27 ± 0.20 mm, and 0.38 ± 0.30 mm for the 1 mm, 2 mm, and 3 mm displacement conditions, respectively. The changes of the radius distances were 0.35 ± 0.29 mm, 0.60 ± 0.21 mm, and 0.81 ± 0.29 mm for the 1 mm, 2 mm, and 3 mm displacement conditions, respectively. The changes of the radioulnar distances were 0.10 ± 0.06 mm, 0.34 ± 0.16 mm, and 0.44 ± 0.22 mm for the 1 mm, 2 mm, and 3 mm displacement conditions, respectively. There were no significant differences between the conditions for the changes of ulna distances. The changes of radius distances were significantly increased as the transducer displacement became larger (P < 0.01). There was a smaller change in radioulnar distance in the 1 mm displacement condition compared to the other conditions (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in the radioulnar distance between the 2 mm and 3 mm displacement conditions.

The results of pressures are shown in Fig. 5. The pressures were 100.5 ± 24.4 gf, 205.2 ± 31.1 gf, and 296.8 ± 43.9 gf for the 1 mm, 2 mm, and 3 mm displacement conditions, respectively. The pressure/distance ratio results are shown in Fig. 5. The pressure/distance ratios were 1404.6 ± 815.8 gf/mm, 809.6 ± 597.0 gf/mm, and 867.0 ± 430.6 gf/mm for the 1 mm, 2 mm, and 3 mm displacement conditions, respectively. The pressure was significantly increased as the transducer displacement became larger (P < 0.01). There was a significant difference between the 1 mm displacement condition and the other 2 and 3 mm displacement conditions for the pressure/distance ratio (P < 0.05).

DRUJ instability has been recognized as one of the common clinical problems around the wrist. Several methods have evaluated the amount of dorsovolar translation based on CT [14, 22‐26]. There were radioulnar ratio method [22], radioulnar line method [23], epicenter method [24], and subluxation ratio method [25]. However, these methods are difficult to reproduce, need a CT scan, and sometimes there were poor inter-observer agreements. It is also difficult to understand dynamic force-displacement conditions. In this study, we assessed the utility of a pressure-monitor ultrasound system as a noninvasive method to assess the degree of physiological dorsovolar translation in healthy volunteers. Diagnostic ultrasound equipment is widely available. The basic advantages of ultrasound, such as rapidity, noninvasiveness, portability, and low costs, are well known. In addition, using a pressure-monitor system, we could evaluate the DRUJ force-displacement relation.

Before enrolling patients with DRUJ instability, we wanted to study in detail the normal force-displacement relationship, and it was characterized in this study. Originally, it was expected that the amount of radioulnar translation would be dependent on the amount of force applied. However, the results of radioulnar distance showed that there were significant differences between the 1 mm displacement condition and the other 2 or 3 mm displacement conditions. There were no significant differences between the 2 mm and 3 mm displacement conditions. The pressure-distance ratio also showed the same tendency. This suggested that there was a smaller change in the radioulnar distance in the DRUJ under the 1 mm displacement condition. When displacements more than 2 mm were applied, the changes in the radioulnar distance became more obvious. At the same time, the ligaments and soft tissues around DRUJ started to stabilize the joint. Under displacement control, the capsuloligamentous structures of the joint were stretched and limited displacement through a restraining force. Therefore, there were no significant changes in the radioulnar distance between the 2 mm and 3 mm displacement conditions even when the applied pressure was increased. Thus, the application of 2 mm displacement and 200 g force were the critical stress for the capsuloligamentous structures to start stabilizing DRUJ.

Compared with previous cadaveric studies, the amount of translation was lower because of the good dynamic stability through muscular contraction [17‐19]. Although it is difficult to compare the results directly, the ratio of displacement to the force was about three quarters compared to the previous study [19]. This may be because the examination was performed with remaining the mobility of the radius. As this clinical test intended to be applied to the patient, it was not performed in the condition that the subject felt uncomfortable. The advantage of using this system to evaluate DRUJ instability is to measure pressure and displacement simultaneously. In the case of the patients with DRUJ instability, the displacement may be induced with weaker force. Thus, even less than 3 mm displacement condition, it will be possible to evaluate the DRUJ instability with the force-displacement relationship. Because we evaluated the stability with a gradual increase in the application of stress, we could identify these subtle changes in vivo. This method may be useful to discriminate pathological conditions from normal conditions.

There are several limitations in our study. First, we evaluated DRUJ instability only in the forearm pronation position. There was a report which showed that there was no radioulnar instability in the forearm full pronation position if the radioulnar ligament was intact [21]. Patterns of instability are dependent on forearm position [6]. Other forearm positions may need to be evaluated in future studies. Second, ultrasound measurements are known to be operator- and experience-dependent. Even though we aimed to develop reliable equipment, an experienced operator is still needed for accurate image acquisition. Third, the small sample size may be another limitation. We limited the number of subjects so that we could investigate normal variance in detail before trying to investigate a larger number of subjects or patients. Now that we have confirmed the method and values from normal subjects, we can compare these to patients with DRUJ instability. In addition, we can compare these results with other examiners for a reliability test. Finally, the relationship between the stability and pathology of the DRUJ is still unknown. It would be helpful to understand the pathophysiology better by evaluating the relationship between DRUJ instability and physical findings.

We used an ultrasound method to assess DRUJ stability by measuring changes in radioulnar distance and force application. This methodology and the indices of distance and pressure may be clinically useful to investigate the mechanical property of patients with DRUJ instability.