CT in the staging of children with malignant tumours.

The application of CT whole-body scanning as an adjunct in the staging investigations was evaluated in 56 children with various types of extra-cranial solid malignant tumours. CT proved to be superior to conventional films in the detection of pulmonary or pleural dissemination. The abdominal lymph nodes were difficult to evaluate by CT, and abnormal nodes could only be diagnosed when they were unequivocally enlarged. The role of CT in the detection of liver metastases could not be established in this study due to the rare occurrence of liver involvement. CT seemed to be a valuable method in the prediction of the operability of the primary tumour, but seemed to have an inability to show local invasiveness of the tumour. CT is an important supplement to conventional, noninvasive methods in the staging of these patients because CT is able to detect otherwise undetectable dissemination and this results in an improved therapeutic approach in individual cases.