Objective: Immunosuppressive treatments may be usefull when Graves' ophthalmopathy is active. We evaluated the interest of hypertrophied muscle T2 weighted signal intensity as an argument of disease activity, to help for the therapeutic decision.
Patients and methods: 46 MRI in 37 patients with Graves' ophthalmopathy were retrospectively studied.
Results: During the active phase of the disease, centro-muscular hypersignal was always observed (6 cases); signal intensity was not so bright or even disappeared with immunosuppressive treatment (7 cases). We never observed hypersignal when the disease was inactive (4 cases). When there was no hypersignal on T2 weighted images, the disease was inactive in 70% cases, and of low activity in the other cases.
Conclusion: T2 weighted centro-muscular signal intensity analyse helps for the therapeutic decision in Graves' ophthalmopathy.