Aims and objectives
The aim of our study was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy and radiation doses (dose-length product (DLP),
and effective dose (E)) in patients who underwent cardiac CT angiography (CTA) with retrospective gating acquisition for both coronary study and evaluation of the aorta before transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI)
Methods and materials
We used the EKG modulation of the anodic electricity (maximal current between 40% and 80% of the R-R interval of the cardiac cycle; outside of this interval,
30% of maximum electricity value was used).
The highest mA value to be employed in the percentage of the evaluated R-R interval was chosen based on the patients' BMI index,
so as to obtain values between 116,7 ± 10 mA and 388,9 ± 33,3 mA.
Between June 2017 and September 2017,
9 patients (post- optimised protocol) were studied...
Results
In post-optimised protocol,
we obtained lower values of DLP and E than in group with pre-optimised protocol.
Specifically,
in post-optimised cCTA protocol,
we obtained lower values of DLP and E than in group with pre-optimised protocol (DLP: 719,92 ± 275,08 VS 1481,91 ± 460,29 mGy⋅cm,
p=0,000914); (E: 10,08 ± 3,85 VS 20,75 ± 6,44 mSv; p=0,000912); whereas,
in post-optimised CTA before TAVI protocol,
we obtained lower values of DLP and E than in group with pre-optimised protocol (DLP: 1668,17 ± 430,76 VS 3375,94 ± 465,20...
Conclusion
Our study provided comparable image quality and diagnostic value with substantially lower radiation exposure.
It indicated statistically significant reduction of radiation dose DLP (p<0,01) and E (p<0,01).
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