Influence of Section Spacing on Reliability of Abdominal Computed Tomography in Early Stage Non-Seminomatous Testicular Tumor

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Abstract
Comparison of reliability of CT with contiguous and noncontiguous scan reading was performed in 100 consecutive patients with a non-seminomatous testicular tumor and lymph nodes less than 20 mm at CT. The patients underwent primary lymphadenectomy and histologic examination of removed nodes. Ten mm thick slices at adjacent 10 mm intervals were used and non-contiguous reading was based on sections with uneven numbers. Reading of non-contiguous scans led to drop in sensitivity from 71 % to 66% compared with contiguous scans when 5 mm was used as criterion for abnormal node size. Corresponding decrease was from 47% to 39% with the 10 mm criterion and from 37% to 26? with the 15 mm criterion. Other parameters were only slightly influenced by the scan reading technique. The benefit of contiguous as opposed to non-contiguous scanning was small in the present series.

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