Assessment of utilization and pharmacovigilance based on spontaneous adverse event reporting of gadopentetate dimeglumine as a magnetic resonance contrast agent after 45 million administrations and 15 years of clinical use.

Purpose: Although contrast agents have become indispensable tools in magnetic resonance and their safe and effective use the foundation of many essential diagnostic procedures, only limited summary information on their utilization and pharmacovigilance is available to the community. After voluntary access to the manufacturer spontaneous adverse event database, we assessed the available data for gadopentetate dimeglumine.

Material And Methods: Gadopentetate dimeglumine (Gd-DTPA, Magnevist; Berlex/Schering AG, Berlin, Germany) became commercially available in 1988 and is currently marketed in 101 countries.

Superparamagnetic iron oxide particles (SH U 555 A): evaluation of efficacy in three doses for hepatic MR imaging.

Purpose: To evaluate the efficacy of SH U 555 A in three doses for magnetic resonance (MR) imaging in the liver and to establish the best postinjection time point for liver MR imaging.

Materials And Methods: Pre- and postcontrast image sets obtained in 169 patients after injection of SH U 555 A (randomly, 4, 8, or 16 mumol of iron per kilogram of body weight). Three blinded readers evaluated the precontrast and 10- and 40-minute postcontrast MR images of 54, 58, and 57 patients, respectively.