Aims and objectives
As the number of cardiac imaging tests in patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) has increased,
so have the unexpected or incidental findings (IFs) in these exams.
Extracardiac structures should be routinely analyzed to detect asymptomatic unknown conditions needing specific management.
We evaluated the prevalence of these findings in 64MDCT and their degree of clinical relevance.
Methods and materials
We included 222 64-MDCT studies with CHD.
Scans were double-blind reading by two expert CHD radiologists.
A confidence interval was set at 95%.
p<0.05 values were used as the cutoff for statistical significance.
This study was performed in compliance with the organic law of data protection (RD-L 5/2018 of July 30,
2018) and all personal data were properly safeguarded at all times.
It was also accepted by the Clinical Research Ethics Committee of the University Hospital for its realization (PI-1260).
We have carried out an...
Results
The IFs were 31.6% of all the pathological findings obtained and grouped by anatomical units.
We did not find statistically significant differences between different groups.
However,
we observed grouping tendencies due to the characteristics of each entity or pathology group: the group of critical CHD was by far the group in which we found the highest frequency of IFs.
In this work,
we tried to reflect the prevalence and the impact of IFs,
both cardiovascular and extracardiac in the patient’s management.
All these findings were...
Conclusion
With the use of 64-MDCT,
a large number of incidental findings are discovered.
Some of them can contribute to the interpretation of the CHD or have multi-systemic extra-cardiac involvement.
Collaboration between radiologists and cardiologists is needed in order to make an accurate diagnosis.
Personal information
Contact details:
Dr.
José Ignacio Rodríguez Martín,
M.D.
Resident in training.Department of Radiology,
Hospital Universitario La Paz.
Paseo de la Castellana,
261,
28046 Madrid,
Spain.
Email:
[email protected]
Dra.
Montserrat Bret-Zurita,
M.D.; Ph.D.
Pediatric section.
Department of Radiology.
Pediatric cardiac and congenital heart diseases imaging.
Hospital Universitario La Paz.
Paseo de la Castellana,
261,
28046 Madrid,
Spain.
Email:
[email protected]
References
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Postgrad Med...
