Aims and objectives
Although a barium-contrast radiography originally constituted the first development in diagnosing hiatal hernia (HH) and gastroesophageal reflux,
nowadays conventional radiology is no more an accurate investigation for their assessment.
Paradoxically,
we noticed a tendency to a negative contribution to the management of these conditions.
In fact,
we observed in clinical practice a worrisome rate of HH reported as incidental extra-colonic finding during CT with water enema (CT-WE) and CT colonography (CTC).
This suspicious has been recently confirmed by the study of Pickhardt et al.,
which...
Methods and materials
Inclusion of patients
This was a retrospective study,
approved by our institutional review board.
The primary study groups were derived from 400 consecutive patients,
200 undergoing CT-WE and 200 undergoing CTC at our unit of radiology starting from January 1,
2013.
The mean age of the CT-WE cohort (118 women,
82 men) was 66.5 ± 14.2 (SD) years,
while the mean age of the CTC group (127 women,
73 men) was 65.7 ± 12.4 (SD) years.
Among the patients with a HH at CT-WE and...
Results
No statistical significant differences were found among the groups enrolled in terms of demographic and epidemiological characteristics (Table 1).
A sliding hiatal hernia was present in 51% (102/200) of the patients belonging to the CT-WE cohort and in 48.5% (97/200) of the patients in the CTC group.
In CT-WE patients,
hernia size was reported as small in 82.4% (84/102) of patients,
moderate in 12.7% (13/102),
and large in 4.9% (5/102).
In CTC patients,
hernia size was categorized as small in 79.4% (77/97) of patients,
moderate...
Conclusion
The main source of inspiration for this work was the study by Pickhardt et al.
[1] affirming that small transient sliding hiatal hernias are commonly induced by colonic distention at CTC and should not be reported: their results pushed us to verify if such circumstance was relevant for CT-WE as well,
in order to start correcting a trend of over-reporting and the resulting inappropriate management of these patients.
The evaluation of complex and panoramic exams such as abdominal CT with water enema or CT colonography...
References
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Kim DH,
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Pandolfino JE (2008) Approaches to the diagnosis and grading of hiatal hernia.
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Tutuian R,
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et al (2010) Characteristics of reflux episodes and symptom association in patients with erosive esophagitis and nonerosive reflux disease: study using combined impedance-pH...