A prospective study of 238 patients was performed in a district general hospital to assess current diagnostic accuracy rates and to ascertain the use and the effectiveness of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanning in reducing the number of negative arthroscopies. The pre-operative diagnosis of patients listed for knee arthroscopy was medial meniscus tear 94 (40%) and osteoarthritis 59 (25%). MRI scans were requested in 57 patients (24%) with medial meniscus tear representing 65% (37 patients). The correlation study was done between pre-operative diagnosis, MRI and arthroscopic diagnosis. Clinical diagnosis was as accurate as the MRI with 79% agreement between the preoperative diagnosis and arthroscopy compared to 77% agreement between MRI scan and arthroscopy. There was no evidence, in this study, that MRI scan can reduce the number of negative arthroscopies. Four normal MRI scans had positive arthroscopic diagnosis (two torn medial meniscus, one torn lateral meniscus and one chondromalacia patella). Out of 240 arthroscopies, there were only 10 normal knees (negative arthroscopy) representing 4% of the total number of knee arthroscopies; one patient of those 10 cases had MRI scan with ACL rupture diagnosis.
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