La Radiologia medica
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La Radiologia medica · Apr 2001
[Diagnostic imaging and patient database managing systems: The integration of digital information in the experience of an intensive care center].
To present our experience with integrating digital information on Intensive Care Unit patients (clinical data, laboratory findings, imaging, etc) to create electronic patient records. ⋯ For the intensivist, the handling and filing of data on hospitalised or discharged patients for treatment or research purposes involves having to process large amounts of information. Furthermore, in the event of patients being re-admitted to the unit, it is crucial to have ready access to all the information regarding previous hospital stays, including diagnostic images, to avoid the need for time-consuming searches through the hospital s paper-based archives. The possibility to access clinical information and diagnostic images using a single computer programme proved to be useful both for evaluating the patient s conditions immediately after the imaging procedure and for monitoring the patient s progress over time by comparing the different diagnostic images and imaging procedures. This pilot experience could be seen to provide the basic know-how for applying the method in the future Emergency Department of the A. Gemelli Hospital in Rome.
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To assess the role of Ultrasound (US), US Color Doppler (CD) and Power Doppler (PD) in the diagnosis and in the follow-up of renal graft pathology by evaluating morphological and functional features of the vasculature and comparing these to other clinical parameters. ⋯ CD is a non-invasive diagnostic method which provides flow-metric quantitative parameters for the hemodynamic assessment of the renal transplant. These values present a certain sensitivity but are not specific of renal graft dysfunction, as there is no reliable differentiation between acute rejection and other parenchymal pathologies. During the follow-up, RI and PI have no predictive value. RI variations from renal artery to cortical vessels (hylum-cortical ratio) show a good correlation with the clinical evolution of the transplant. The evaluation of RI and PI can generally be limited to renal and interlobar arteries as arcuate sampling is necessary only when the hylum-cortical ratio shows reduction or inversion. Integration of clinical and instrumental diagnoses can reduce the number of biopsies.