Torres Alvaro, Koskinen Seppo K, Gjertsen Henrik, Fischler Björn
Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology (CLINTEC) Karolinska Institute Alfred Nobels alle 8 Huddinge 141 52 Sweden.
Division of Radiology Karolinska University Hospital C1:46 Huddinge Sweden.
Australas J Ultrasound Med. 2021 Jun 27;24(3):143-150. doi: 10.1002/ajum.12279. eCollection 2021 Aug.
Contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) is a widely used diagnostic method. In adults, it has been proven to be a useful alternative to CT and MRI for the characterisation of focal liver lesions (FLLs). However, since there is no official paediatric licensing for any ultrasound contrast agents in Europe, its use has been restricted.
To retrospectively outline our experience with CEUS as a tool for the characterisation of FLLs in paediatric patients.
An eleven-year retrospective single-centre study. During this period, we identified 287 CEUS examinations performed on children, of these 36 were relevant first-time examinations with the aim of characterising a focal liver lesion. Clinical and radiological data were collected from the hospital chart.
The overall agreement between the CEUS diagnosis and the reference diagnosis for benign versus malignant differentiation was 75%. When analysing conclusive CEUS examinations only, the overall agreement was 96%. The specificity for correctly characterising a lesion as benign was 96%, and the negative predictive value was 100%. No side effects from CEUS were detected.
Our study reinforces that CEUS can be useful in the medical workup for the identification and classification of focal liver lesions in children.
超声造影（CEUS）是一种广泛应用的诊断方法。在成人中，已证明它是CT和MRI之外用于肝脏局灶性病变（FLLs）特征性诊断的一种有用替代方法。然而，由于欧洲没有任何超声造影剂获得官方儿科许可，其应用受到限制。
回顾性概述我们将CEUS作为儿科患者FLLs特征性诊断工具的经验。
一项为期11年的回顾性单中心研究。在此期间，我们确定了对儿童进行的287次CEUS检查，其中36次是相关的首次检查，目的是对肝脏局灶性病变进行特征性诊断。从医院病历中收集临床和放射学数据。
CEUS诊断与良性与恶性鉴别参考诊断之间的总体一致性为75%。仅分析确定性CEUS检查时，总体一致性为96%。将病变正确特征化为良性的特异性为96%，阴性预测值为100%。未检测到CEUS的副作用。
我们的研究强化了CEUS在儿童肝脏局灶性病变识别和分类的医学检查中可能有用的观点。
