3. Terminology

The inconstancy of findings indicative of a true inflammatory process on histopathological examination prompted a suggestion to abandon the term bursitis in favor of local bursal reaction when describing bursal abnormalities.25 We prefer the term bursitis because it is popular, even though we agree that the suffix –itis overemphasizes the inflammatory component of a clinical entity which may represent inflammatory and/or degenerative changes. In this book, as in sonographic reports, we use the term bursitis as a descriptive, not histopathological diagnosis.