• Anthony Scillia, Kimona Issa, Vincent K McInerney, Edward Milman, Romulo Baltazar, Umer Dasti, and Anthony Festa.
• School of Health and Medical Sciences, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Seton Hall University, 400 South Orange, South Orange, NJ, 07079, USA, anthonyjscillia@gmail.com.
• Skeletal Radiol. 2015 Aug 1; 44 (8): 1135-9.

ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of in vivo acromioclavicular (AC) joint injections without fluoroscopic guidance and assess whether patient demographics affected the accuracy of injections.Materials And MethodsA consecutive cohort of patients who presented with painful acromioclavicular joints was prospectively evaluated. All patients had clinical and radiographic evidence of AC arthritis, had failed conservative measures, and thus had received intraarticular corticosteroid injections. All injections were performed by experienced fellowship-trained musculoskeletal radiologists and by blinded digital palpation technique. Accuracy of injections was assessed with biplanar fluoroscopic views.ResultsForty-one AC injections in 22 males and 16 females with a mean age of 51 years (range 18 to 78) were identified. Twenty-three injections were in the right shoulder and 18 in the left. Only 15 injections were confirmed to be in the intraarticular AC joint, yielding an accuracy of 36.5%. There were no significant differences in the mean age (54 vs. 52 years; p = 0.58), male-to-female ratio (p = 0.73), and side of the injection between the accurate and inaccurate injections, respectively.ConclusionBased on the findings of the present study, the authors encourage the use of image guidance for corticosteroid treatment of the AC joint.Level Of EvidenceLevel IV Therapeutic Case Series.

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