Department of Radiology, National University Hospital, Singapore.
Department of Radiology, National University Hospital, Singapore.
Clin Radiol. 2020 Nov;75(11):832-844. doi: 10.1016/j.crad.2020.05.003. Epub 2020 Jun 14.
Liver transplantation is a frequently used treatment for patients with end-stage liver disease and ultrasound is often the first-line imaging technique for detection of vascular complications after liver transplant. Although colour Doppler ultrasound is a good screening method for evaluation of post-liver transplant vasculature, it has limitations in evaluating small-calibre vessels and vessels in close proximity. Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) has been proposed to overcome these limitations by improving visualisation of post-liver transplant vasculature and reducing the number of false-positive cases, which necessitate unnecessary additional investigations such as computed tomography or angiography. Liver transplant anatomy and the wide array of post-transplant imaging findings on colour Doppler have already been well described but literature on the use of CEUS and its image interpretation remain scarce. This review aims to discuss the indications for CEUS after liver transplant, to demonstrate CEUS technique and familiarise readers with the imaging appearances of post-transplant vascular complications on CEUS.
肝移植是治疗终末期肝病患者的常用方法，超声通常是肝移植后血管并发症检测的一线影像学技术。虽然彩色多普勒超声是评估肝移植后血管的一种很好的筛查方法，但它在评估小血管和近距离血管方面存在局限性。对比增强超声（CEUS）的提出是为了克服这些局限性，通过改善肝移植后血管的可视化和减少假阳性病例的数量，这些病例需要进行不必要的额外检查，如计算机断层扫描或血管造影。肝移植解剖结构和彩色多普勒上广泛的移植后影像学表现已经得到了很好的描述，但关于 CEUS 的使用及其图像解释的文献仍然很少。本综述旨在讨论肝移植后 CEUS 的适应证，展示 CEUS 技术，并使读者熟悉移植后血管并发症的 CEUS 影像学表现。
