Journal of ultrasound in medicine : official journal of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine
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Case Reports
Importance of dynamic assessment of the soft tissues in the sonographic diagnosis of echogenic superficial abscesses.
Superficial abscesses evaluated by ultrasonography may occasionally be isoechoic relative to the surrounding inflamed tissues and without mass effect, preventing diagnosis by morphologic criteria alone. We present a simple and effective method to detect such abscesses. In three cases, gentle repetitive pressure of the inflamed tissue revealed the liquefied nature of abscesses that otherwise would have been overlooked.
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Most menopausal patients with breast cancer receive tamoxifen therapy. In these patients, TVS may show thickened, irregular cystic endometria. For better visualization of these patients' uterine cavities, we performed transvaginal sonohysterography. ⋯ All 20 patients underwent diagnostic hysteroscopy: eight polyps, none of which were malignant, were confirmed and removed by hysteroscopic resection. Of the remaining 12 patients with an irregular endometrial-myometrial junction, endometrial curettage showed no significant pathologic findings. Transvaginal sonohysterography seems to enhance the differentiation between endometrial polyps that should be resected by operative hysteroscopy and an abnormal endometrial-myometrial junction that may benefit from biopsy sampling only.