by
Barbara Kram, Editor | October 03, 2007
The American Roentgen
Ray Society (ARRS)
was founded in 1900
and is the oldest
radiology society in
the United States.
Radiologists need to look beyond the renal arteries when doing renal MR angiography (MRA), a study conducted at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN suggests. The study found that 98% of patients who underwent renal MRA had one or more additional vascular or nonvascular findings.
The study included 380 patients who underwent an MRA exam. According to the study, 151 (40%) of these patients had one or more additional vascular findings not related to renal arteries. These findings included mesenteric artery stenosis or occlusion in 33% of patients, moderate to severe aortic atherosclerosis in 17% and aortic aneurysms in 7%, said James F. Glockner, MD, lead author of the study.
Two hundred twenty one (58%) had one or more non-vascular findings, with most of those being benign lesions. However, malignancies were detected in 10 patients, Dr. Glockner said.
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"I think the main implication of the study is that incidental findings are common enough that we need to look for them, and that our MRA protocols should include at least a few additional sequences so that most of the incidental findings can be interpreted unambiguously without the need for another exam," said Dr. Glockner. "The high incidence of incidental findings emphasizes the importance of performance and interpretation of these exams by physicians with training in abdominal cross-sectional imaging," he said.
The full results of this study appear in the September issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology, published by the American Roentgen Ray Society.
Click here for the abstract.
About ARRS
The American Roentgen Ray Society (ARRS) was founded in 1900 and is the oldest radiology society in the United States. Its monthly journal, the American Journal of Roentgenology, began publication in 1906. Radiologists from all over the world attend the ARRS Annual Meeting to take part in instructional courses, scientific paper presentations, symposia, new issues forums and scientific and commercial exhibits related to the field of radiology. The Society is named after the first Nobel Laureate in Physics, Wilhelm Röentgen, who discovered the X-ray in 1895.
