Type:
Educational Exhibit
Keywords:
Trauma, Quality assurance, Acute, Technical aspects, Safety, Diagnostic procedure, CT, Paediatric, Contrast agents, Abdomen
Authors:
L. Sembele, I. Apine; Riga/LV
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2018/C-2962
Background
Due to increased sensitivity of paediatric pacients to ionizing radiation in paediatric CT imaging it is important to reduce the radiation dose avoiding multiple scanning phases.
This creates a problem in assessment of abdominal organs in politrauma patients where damage of parenchymal organs and urinary tract can be present requiring both parenchymal and late excretory phase.
The split bolus technique is a solution to combine both phases in one by splitting the necessary amount of contrast medium in two parts,
the first of which is administered but not followed by immediate scanning and the second part is administered followed by scanning in portovenous phase.
Thus the gained images depict both parenchymal and excretory phases.
Since there is limited evidence on the proportion of contrast medium to be splitted and literature data explaining the optimal proportions or volume of contrast medium are contraversial with no common opinion.