European radiology
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Review Case Reports
Inadvertent intrathecal use of ionic contrast agent.
Intrathecal administration of ionic contrast media may cause severe and fatal neurotoxic reactions due to their hyperosmolarity and ionic nature. They are therefore strictly contraindicated for all radiologic applications involving the central nervous system (e.g., myelography). We present a case in which ioxitalamate was accidentally injected intrathecally. The patient recovered completely due to a combination of the different therapeutic options reported in the literature, including early mechanical ventilation and neuromuscular paralysis, aggressive control of seizures, elevation of head and trunk to prevent cephalad migration of contrast, steroids, cerebrospinal fluid drainage and lavage and prophylactic antibiotics.
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Presentation with acute abdominal pain or abdominal symptopathology is a very common cause of presentation of children to hospital. The causes are dependent in part on the age of the child, in part on the presence of previous surgery, and can be divided into those that relate to congenital abnormalities at whatever age they present, acquired disease and infection. Children, particularly young children are often poor historians, and therefore the clinical examination and the laboratory investigations are important in helping to come to a diagnosis. ⋯ The three commonest causes of acute abdominal pain in childhood are, in young infants, intussusception, appendicitis and mesenteric adenitis. In older children, inflammatory bowel disease and ovarian pathology are also included. This article details the approach to imaging and the salient features of some of the conditions.
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Myocardial contusion after a chest trauma is a frequently under-diagnosed injury. We report two cases of myocardial contusion in which MR imaging, thanks to its contrast capability, was able to assess the presence of a haematoma and in one case to demonstrate the recovery of the lesion.
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Risk factors for acute venous occlusion range from prolonged immobilization to hypercoagulability syndromes, trauma, and malignancy. The aim of this review article is to illustrate the different imaging options for the diagnosis of acute venous occlusion and to assess the value of interventional strategies for venous thrombosis treatment in an emergency setting. First, diagnosis and treatment of the most common form of venous occlusion, at the level of the lower extremities, is presented, followed by pelvic vein and inferior vena cava occlusion, mesenteric venous thrombosis, upper extremity occlusion, acute cerebral vein thrombosis, and finally acute venous occlusion of hemodialysis access. ⋯ Among the various methods described for acute occlusion screening, ultrasonography and MRI have been proven to be accurate and noninvasive; however, if immediate treatment can be anticipated, imaging should be performed directly by digital subtraction angiography before the percutaneous intervention. Initial percutaneous thrombectomy is very effective with success rates and patency rates comparable to those of surgical thrombectomy. A short thrombosis can be treated with balloon angioplasty alone, whereas an extensive thrombosis requires a combination of mechanical devices and/or thrombolytic agents with adjunctive balloon angioplasty.
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The purpose of this prospective study was to measure lung attenuation at paired HRCT obtained at full inspiratory/expiratory position, to correlate with pulmonary function tests (PFTs) and to characterize different types of ventilatory impairment. One hundred fifty-five patients with and without pulmonary disease underwent paired HRCT obtained at full inspiratory/expiratory position. Three scan pairs were evaluated by densito- and planimetry using dedicated software. ⋯ Inspiratory MLD and the expiratory attenuation increase were able to differentiate obstructive and restrictive ventilatory impairment from normal subjects, the best results were obtained from scans obtained at full expiratory position ( p<0.05). In conclusion, scans obtained at full expiratory position reveal more functional information than scans obtained at full inspiratory position. Quantitative analysis of CT obtained at full expiratory position provides good estimations of static and dynamic lung volumes as well as significant differences between normal subjects and patients with ventilatory impairment.