Diagnostic specificity of synovial lesions.

Sections of synovium from 393 operations on diseased joints were re-examined without knowledge of the clinical findings. Specimens were scored for each of 37 histopathologic features. Independently, patients were assigned to one of 10 diagnostic groups after review of all available clinical data. Computer analysis revealed statistically significant differences in the incidence of one or more histologic parameters between the members of all except three of the possible disease pairs. The possibility of exploiting these differences to increase diagnostic precision was examined.