About a third of CT examinations performed following an inconclusive abdominal ultrasound have positive findings, and most are useful in diagnosing renal lesions.
About 33 percent of CT examinations performed following an inconclusive abdominal ultrasound have positive findings, and most are useful in diagnosing renal lesions, say researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
For a study presented this week at the American Roentgen Ray Society Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada, researchers reviewed findings from 449 patients who had undergone an abdominal ultrasound that was inconclusive, followed by a CT scan. The results showed that 32.9 percent of the follow-up CTs had positive findings, 42.7 percent had no significant positive findings, 12 percent had incidental findings unrelated to the reason for the scan, and 11.7 percent were inconclusive.
Where the follow-up scan was the most useful was in diagnosing renal lesions, where the positivity rate was 87.5 percent for renal cysts and 81.8 percent for renal stones, the two most common indications for follow-up CT scans, researchers found.
“While only about 33 percent of the CT examinations had positive findings, it doesn’t mean that the other CT exams were not as valuable as sometimes even negative exams add a lot to patient management,” said Supriya Gupta, MD, one of the study authors.
However, researchers said, standardized guidelines for the use of follow-up CT scans do need to be developed because of the cost and radiation implications.
FDA Clears CT-Based AI Tools for PE Detection and Stroke Severity Assessment
March 26th 2024The artificial intelligence (AI) modalities CINA-iPE and CINA-ASPECTS may facilitate improved detection of incidental pulmonary embolism and stroke evaluation, respectively, based on computed tomography (CT) scans.
FDA Clears Remote Scanning Support Platform for MRI, CT and PET/CT
March 25th 2024The multimodality system nCommand Lite reportedly facilitates real-time remote imaging guidance on scanning parameters and procedure assessments to licensed technologists for a variety of imaging modalities including CT and MRI.
The Reading Room: Racial and Ethnic Minorities, Cancer Screenings, and COVID-19
November 3rd 2020In this podcast episode, Dr. Shalom Kalnicki, from Montefiore and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, discusses the disparities minority patients face with cancer screenings and what can be done to increase access during the pandemic.