Impact of Sacroiliac Joint Injection on Bone Marrow Edema and Disease Outcome Measures in Spondyloarthritis (SpA) Patients

SpA is a chronic, debilitating inflammatory rheumatic disease that affects axial and peripheral joints, internal organs, and other tissues. Sacroiliitis is a hallmark of axial SpA. Sacroliliitis has a great effect on spine pain, function and cephalic progression of the disease . The prevalence of SpA ranged from 9 to 30 per 10,000 persons in Caucasian populations, Europe or the United States . The management of axial SpA is really challenging. The traditional disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) were ineffective in controlling the axial disease. Biological agents such as tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) inhibitor and anti-interleukin 17 have shown promising results in achieving remission or low disease activity for axial SpA .

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is established as the imaging method of choice for the early diagnosis and follow-up of SpA patients. Although a positive imaging detection of the axial skeleton is no longer obligatory based on the new Assessment of Spondyloarthritis International Society (ASAS) classification criteria 2010, MRI imaging still plays a crucial role, especially in the early diagnosis arm. MRI has a high sensitivity in detection of acute inflammatory processes as well as the high-resolution visualization of anatomical alterations. The lack of radiation exposure makes MRI ideal for monitoring response to treatment .Bone marrow edema (BME) not only showed high sensitivity for detection of early sacroilitis, but also its reduction was a worthy indicator for disease remission. Intra Articular (IA) injections of SIJ with corticosteroids and anesthestics are often performed for pain relief. Although this technique is relatively old, it was not used on a lrage scale in axial SpA patients. Further, its effect on disease outcome measures were not well elucidated. To the best of our knowledge there is no single study have evaluated effect of steroid and local aneshestic injection on improvement of BME . Image guidance of the SIJ injection is fundamanetal, due to the complex anatomy of the joint causing a low accuracy when performed using blind technique .