Image Diagnosis of Cervical Lymph Nodes: Detectability of Metastatic Nodes Using CT.

概要

論文の詳細を見る
Twenty-one patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity and the adjacent region were analyzed to evaluata the detectability of cervical lymph nodes using computed tomography (CT) . All were scanned with 4mm or 8mm contiguous sections before they received radical neck dissection. The patients consisted of 17 males and 4 females aged from 37 to 71 years (mean 57.5 years) . Resected lymph nodes were confirmed retrospectively on CT images. The detectability was defined as the percentage of lymph nodes detected by CT to those confirmed by surgery. The detectability of cervical lymph nodes including nonmetastatic ones was 49.5%.<BR>The detectability of metastatic nodes was 87.1%, but it rose to 92.3% when intravenous contrast enhancement was performed.<BR>The metastatic nodes were characterized by the findings of rim enhancement or heterogeneous appearances on CT.<BR>The incidence of metastatic nodes depended on their maximum diameter in axial images.<BR>These results show the clinical importance of CT examination for screening the metastatic cervical lymph nodes in patients with cancer of the oral cavity and the adjacent regions.
一般社団法人日本口腔腫瘍学会の論文