La Radiologia medica
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La Radiologia medica · Jan 2015
ReviewBody packing: a review of general background, clinical and imaging aspects.
To avoid detection at border crossings or airport customs, drug trafficking is increasingly performed by intra-corporeal concealment. Body packers may ingest packets of varying size and containing varying drugs (mostly cocaine, heroin and cannabis) mixed with other compounds, while body pushers will insert packets in the rectum or vaginal cavity. Body packing may lead to potential life-threatening complications with acute overdose syndromes after packet rupture and intestinal obstruction with possible ensuing bowel rupture being the most significant complications. ⋯ Although conventional radiography has long been and still is the most important imaging modality for screening for presence of intestinal packets, the better test characteristics in conjunction with the decreasing radiation exposure, will likely render computed tomography (CT) more important in the future. For imaging of symptomatic patients, CT already is the modality of choice. Besides these modalities, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging will be discussed in this paper, together with more general background and clinical information.
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Nonocclusive mesenteric ischaemia (NOMI) is an acute mesenteric circulatory disorder that is not caused by an organic occlusion of blood vessels. It could involve all the abdominal parenchymas and viscera and the whole gastrointestinal tract (from the oesophagus to the rectum), insomuch that the involvement of the entire colon should be considered a distinctive tract in diagnosing this condition in respect of the occlusive forms of ischaemia. The aim of this article is to review the role of imaging in the diagnosis of NOMI and in particular its CT appearances. Recognition of the characteristic CT appearances and the variations associated with a reperfusion event may help in the accurate interpretation of CT in the diagnosis and management of NOMI.