AI Article Synopsis

  • The study aimed to assess the effectiveness of diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI) in diagnosing acute appendicitis by comparing results from 119 patients with appendicitis to 50 control subjects.
  • Results showed that DWI effectively identified inflamed appendixes, with 98.7% accuracy in visual evaluations and significant differences in quantitative measures (p < 0.001) between normal and inflamed tissues.
  • The researchers concluded that DWI is a highly useful diagnostic tool for acute appendicitis, with high sensitivity (99%) and specificity (97%) when using specific signal intensity thresholds.

Article Abstract

Objectives: To evaluate the value of diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI) in the diagnosis of acute appendicitis.

Methods: 119 patients with acute appendicitis and 50 controls were enrolled in this prospective study. DWI was obtained with b factors 0, 500 and 1000 s/mm² and were assessed with a visual scoring system by two radiologists followed by quantitative evaluation of the DW images and ADC maps.

Results: Histopathology revealed appendicitis in 79/92 patients (78%) who had undergone surgery. On visual evaluation, except for one patient with histopathologically proven appendicitis all inflamed appendixes were hyperintense on DWI (98.7%). Quantitative evaluation with DW signal intensities and ADC values revealed a significant difference with normal and inflamed appendixes (p < 0.001). The best discriminative parameter was signal intensity (b 500). With a cut-off value of 56 for the signal intensity the ratio had a sensitivity of 99% and a specificity of 97%. The cut-off ADC value at 1.66 mm²/s had a sensitivity of 97% and a specificity of 99%.

Conclusion: DWI is a valuable technique for the diagnosis of acute appendicitis with both qualitative and quantitative evaluation. DWI increases the conspicuity of the inflamed appendix. We recommend using DWI to diagnose acute appendicitis.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00330-010-1981-6DOI Listing

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