Biliary complications after orthotopic liver transplant (OLT) remain one of the primary causes of morbidity and mortality in liver transplant recipients with an approximate incidence between 5% and 32%. Given the limited supply of hepatic grafts, one of the most feared outcomes as a result of biliary complications is acute and or chronic graft failure. Biliary complications include leaks, biliary stasis, and stone formation, sphincter of Oddi dysfunction, recurrence of biliary disease (primary sclerosing cholangitis and primary biliary cirrhosis), and biliary strictures/obstruction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInfective endocarditis and cardiac implantable electronic device infection (CIEDI) have witnessed an increasing incidence in clinical practice and associated with increasing health care expenditure. Expanding indications of CIED in various cardiovascular conditions have also contributed to the surge of these infections. Early diagnosis of these infections is associated with a favorable prognosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLeuk Lymphoma
January 2023
Background: Cure rates for Hodgkin's lymphoma are excellent, but excess short-term and long-term morbidities from treatment remain a concern. Immunotherapy targeting both tumor antigens and the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment in children, adolescents, and young adults with Hodgkin's lymphoma may improve early response rates and eliminate toxic chemotherapy and radiation, thus minimizing toxicity. We conducted a phase II study to evaluate the safety and overall response rate of brentuximab vedotin and rituximab in combination with risk-adapted chemotherapy in children, adolescents, and young adults with newly diagnosed classic Hodgkin's lymphoma (cHL).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCarotidynia remains mired in controversy. Whether to identify this self-limiting unilateral neck pain as a distinct clinical entity or a diagnostic sign associated with a variety of conditions remains a topic of ongoing debate. Adding to the discussion is the occasional finding on imaging studies of a transient inflammatory process surrounding the carotid artery in a number of individuals who present with unilateral neck pain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Emerg Trauma Shock
December 2020
Assessment of fluid status can play a critical role in the diagnosis and management of emergent conditions such as trauma, shock, decompensated heart failure, syncope, and hypertension. Unfortunately, common methods are all qualitative and/or indirect, and often inaccurate. With the recent introduction of a modernized method of nuclear medicine blood volume analysis (NM-BVA), offering results in 90 min or less as well as improved precision and ease of performance, this decade-old technique is for the first time a viable tool in the emergent setting.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecreational water use (RWU) injuries span from superficial lacerations to even death. Given the global popularity of RWU, radiologists should be aware of the common mechanisms and key imaging findings related to injuries in this setting. The goal of this article is to depict common RWU injuries and their emergent radiographic findings, which may have both important surgical and management implications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 was signed into law on April 16, 2015, fundamentally altering the way clinicians are reimbursed for the treatment of Medicare patients starting in 2017. Under this new pay-for-performance model, reimbursement will be tied to multiple metrics related to quality and cost of care. A scaled scoring system will require providers to compete for positive reimbursement adjustments, while also penalizing poor performers with negative adjustments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn evaluating the gastrointestinal tract, whether in the emergency room setting, the inpatient setting or the outpatient setting, the radiologist may encounter a myriad of intraluminal radio-opaque, non-anatomic entities. It is the radiologist's role to distinguish between true foreign bodies and medical paraphernalia. Further, the later must be evaluated for proper positioning vs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The purpose of this article is to discuss the concept of cloud technology, its role in medical applications and radiology, the role of the radiologist in using and accessing these vast resources of information, and privacy concerns and HIPAA compliance strategies.
Conclusion: Cloud computing is the delivery of shared resources, software, and information to computers and other devices as a metered service. This technology has a promising role in the sharing of patient medical information and appears to be particularly suited for application in radiology, given the field's inherent need for storage and access to large amounts of data.
Objective: The purpose of this article is to review the steps that can be taken to ensure secure transfer of information over public and home networks, given the increasing utilization of mobile devices in radiology.
Conclusion: With the rapid technologic developments in radiology, knowledge of various technical aspects is crucial for any practicing radiologist. Utilization of mobile devices, such as laptops, tablets, and even cellular phones, for reading radiologic studies has become increasingly prevalent.
A 3-month-old boy with a history of an abdominopelvic neuroblastoma presented 1 week after tumor resection for a routine follow-up 123-I Meta-iodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) scan to assess for residual mass. The study demonstrated abnormal radiotracer uptake in the right upper lobe, which correlated on the SPECT/CT to an area of airspace consolidation thought to be secondary to atelectasis. To the best of our knowledge, there is one published case of MIBG radiotracer uptake in the lung correlating with pneumonia; however, there are no reported cases to date in the literature of focal pulmonary MIBG uptake corresponding to atelectasis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe present a unique case of a patient with a clinical history of distal esophageal carcinoma and CT appearance of lipomatous hypertrophy of the interatrial septum who displayed fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) uptake in the interatrial septal fat on only the second of 4 serial PET/CT studies. As PET/CT scans are used for the initial staging of esophageal carcinoma, one should not mistake more benign causes of mediastinal uptake for metastasis when observing an intermittent pattern of uptake on a PET/CT scan.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAbscess formation after abdominal surgery is not an uncommon complication. It is much less common for a collection to be the result of a fistulous tract from the bowel. We describe a patient who underwent a Tc-99m hepatobiliary (Choletec) scan for the workup of a perihepatic abscess, which confirmed the presence of a fistulous tract from the small bowel to a perihepatic collection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA 72-year-old man was hospitalized for transurethral resection of bladder cancer. Two days after the procedure, the patient continued to have gross hematuria and a computed tomography (CT) scan of the abdomen and pelvis with intravenous contrast was performed to check the integrity of the resection site. Later that day, the patient underwent technetium-99m methylene diphosphonate (MDP) bone scintigraphy to investigate the possibility of bone metastasis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDiagnosing Lyme arthritis without a history of travel to endemic regions or erythema migrans can be a challenge. Radiographic and ultrasonographic findings are nonspecific for the diagnosis of Lyme arthritis. We present the MRI features of Lyme disease of the hip in a 4-year-old boy who presented with hip pain and was found to have Lyme disease by Western blot.
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