Evaluation of Intra-Articular Knee Injuries Using Infrared Thermography in Adult Military Personnel of the Brazilian Army.

UNLABELLED: Researchers have used cold stress to highlight inflammatory processes as well as injuries. However, its use in analyzing knee injuries through thermography has not yet been well-established. This paper aimed to assed the effects of cold stress in absolute temperatures and the thermal asymmetries of injured knees, as well to evaluate the perceptions of physicians who aren't specialists in thermology regarding these differences.

METHODS

This is a cross-sectional study involved images taken using non-probability sampling of 08 military men (from 20 to 45 years old) and 02 military women (39 and 40 years old), who were recruited from a group undergoing physical therapy for internal knee injuries, either surgical or non-surgical. The thermal images of the knees were obtained at two different moments: 1) immediately after acclimatization (T0) with being exposed to cold stimulation; and 2) immediately after the immersion of both hands in a container with cold water (15.0 ± 0,2 °C) for the total of 1 minute (T1). To analyze the doctors' perception of the questionnaire, a messaging and survey application was used through the Google forms platform.

RESULTS

The results showed no significant difference between the absolute temperatures and the thermal asymmetries. However, all absolute temperatures decreased after cold stress. survey responses revealed that physicians preferred the images after cold stress in 5 of the 7 images that represented anterior cruciate ligament injury, although there wasn't a predominant image in comparison to one another.

CONCLUSION

There was no significant difference between absolute temperatures and thermal asymmetries in the baseline condition and after thermal stress. A tendency to prefer the post-stress images for anterior cruciate ligament injuries was also observed.Clinical Relevance- This paper aims to establish an opportunity for evaluating intra-articular knee injuries using infrared thermography (IRT) in association with cold stress (CS) in Brazilian Army personnel.