Aims and objectives
Hepatocarcinoma (HCC) is one of the biggest health problems worldwide.
Among the primary liver tumors it is certainly the most frequent in clinical practice (about 90% of all primary tumors) with an average survival rate between 6 and 20 months without treatment.
[1]
The incidence of HCC is constantly increasing in Europe and in the rest of the world.
Among all cancers,
it stands at sixth place for incidence (749 000 new cases / year) and at the third for mortality (692 000 cases /...
Methods and materials
Retrospective study involving 42 patients belonging to the Duilio Casula Polyclinic of Monserrato in the reference period between 01.01.2016 and 31.07.2018.
Patients were not diagnosed with HCC before the radiological examination: almost all of these were initial examinations following the detection of a lesion of the ultrasound check performed under surveillance for HCC; some of them were second examination given the non-conclusiveness of the first imaging exam.
28 patients performed CT,
14 patients performed MR.
The evaluation of the examination was performed by 3 expert...
Results
Cohen's Kappa statistics showed a smallintra reader agreement before and after that residents read and applied the LIRADS manual (Fig.
3 Table 1: k ranges from 0.289 to 0.5 for CT and from 0.136 to 0.65 for MR).
We found an increased inter-reader agreement in every pair of readers after that they applied the LIRADS manual,
for CT,
and every pair of readers but one,
for MR.
For residents with less than 3 years of experience,
analyzing CTs,
the k ranged from 0.049 to 0.263...
Conclusion
In conclusion we proved how applying LIRADS criteria the inter-reader agreement increased in almost every pair of readers.
Considering the trainee-situation of the readers we can imply that the LIRADS manual helped them in better understanding the diagnostic algorithm and signs of HCC,
being them major or ancillary.
A further evaluation is needed,
comparing these results to a gold standard (such as clinical follow up,
or histology),
to establish if,
beside the concordance,
also the diagnostic accuracy has improved for both unexperienced and experienced residents....
References
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