Diagnostic Imaging, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, via Alvaro del Portillo, 21, 00128, Rome, Italy,
Insights Imaging. 2013 Jun;4(3):301-8. doi: 10.1007/s13244-013-0234-z. Epub 2013 Mar 2.
To determine the prevalence of clinically and non-clinically relevant extra-spinal incidental findings (IF) in patients undergoing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the lumbar spine and to evaluate the rate of undetected findings in archived radiological reports.
A retrospective search of patients undergoing lumbar spine MRI from January 2006 to December 2010 was conducted. By means of randomisation, we retrospectively reviewed 3,000 lumbar spine MRI examinations. Extra-spinal abnormalities were classified according to a modified CT Colonography Reporting and Data System (C-RADS). We retrospectively compared our structured approach with the archived MRI reports as it regarded the detection of extra-spinal IF to estimate non-detection rates.
By means of the structured approach used, extra-spinal findings were detected in 2,060 (68.6 %) of the 3,000 lumbar spine MRI examinations; 362 (17.6 %) patients had indeterminate or clinically important findings (E3 and E4) requiring clinical correlation or further evaluation. After review of the original archived radiological reports, potentially important C-RADS E3 and E4 extra-spinal IF were respectively reported in 47 of the 265 (17.7 %) and in 8 of 74 (10.8 %) patients.
Our study shows that incidental extra-spinal findings at conventional lumbar spine MRI are common but underestimated in radiological reports.
确定在接受腰椎磁共振成像（MRI）检查的患者中临床和非临床相关的脊柱外偶然发现（IF）的患病率，并评估存档放射报告中未发现的发现率。
对 2006 年 1 月至 2010 年 12 月期间接受腰椎 MRI 检查的患者进行了回顾性搜索。通过随机化，我们回顾性地检查了 3000 例腰椎 MRI 检查。根据改良的 CT 结肠成像报告和数据系统（C-RADS）对脊柱外异常进行分类。我们将我们的结构化方法与存档的 MRI 报告进行了回顾性比较，以评估未检测到的比率。
通过使用结构化方法，在 3000 例腰椎 MRI 检查中发现了 2060 例（68.6%）脊柱外发现；362 例（17.6%）患者存在需要临床相关性或进一步评估的不确定或临床重要发现（E3 和 E4）。在审查原始存档的放射报告后，分别在 265 例患者中的 47 例（17.7%）和 74 例患者中的 8 例（10.8%）中报告了潜在重要的 C-RADS E3 和 E4 脊柱外 IF。
我们的研究表明，常规腰椎 MRI 上偶然发现的脊柱外发现很常见，但在放射报告中被低估了。
