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Background: The aim of this study was to compare microwave ablation (MWA) with and without prior placement of an intra-arterial catheter for the purpose of application of contrast medium (CM)., Methods: 148 patients (45 female, 65.1 ± 14.9 years) with liver tumors who underwent CT-guided MWA were included. Of these, 25 patients had an IA catheter placed in the hepatic artery., Results: 37 patients underwent planning imaging for MWA without CM. A total of 86 patients received a standard dose of 80 mL intravenous (IV) CM for the planning scans. The patients with an IA catheter ( n = 25) received an IA application of 10 mL CM. A total of 29 patients received contrast-enhanced scans in the PV phase for control of needle positioning after IV application of a standard dose of 80 mL CM. In patients with an IA catheter, control of the needle position was performed by single-slice scans. IA CM application during the ablation enabled monitoring of the ablation zone. Over the entire intervention, patients with IA catheters received less CM as compared to patients without an IA catheter (39.1 ± 10.4 mL vs. 141 ± 39.69 mL; p < 0.001)., Conclusions: IA catheter placement was associated with a significant decrease of the amount of CM during MWA and enabled monitoring of the ablation zone.

Objective: The Node-RADS classification was recently published as a classification system to better characterize lymph nodes in oncological imaging. The present analysis investigated the diagnostic benefit of the Node-RADS classification of staging computed tomography (CT) images to categorize and stage lymph nodes in patients with colon cancer., Materials and Methods: All patients were surgically resected and the lymph nodes were histopathological analyzed. All investigated lymph nodes were scored in accordance to the Node-RADS classification by two experienced radiologists. Interreader variability was assessed with Cohen's kappa analysis, discrimination analysis was performed with Mann-Whitney-U test and diagnostic accuracy was assessed with receiver-operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis., Results: Overall, 108 patients (n = 49 females, 45.3%) with a mean age of 70.08 ± 14.34 years were included. In discrimination analysis, the total Node-RADS score showed statistically significant differences between N- and N + stage (for reader 1: mean 1.89 ± 1.09 score for N- versus 2.93 ± 1.62 score for N+, for reader 2: 1.33 ± 0.48 score for N- versus 3.65 ± 0.94 score for N+, p = 0.001, respectively). ROC curve analysis for lymph node discrimination showed an area under the curve of 0.68. A threshold value of 2 resulted in a sensitivity of 0.62 and a specificity of 0.71., Conclusion: Node-RADS score derived from staging CT shows only limited diagnostic accuracy to correctly predict nodal positivity in colon cancer. The interreader variability seems to be high and should question the clinical translation for this tumour entity., Competing Interests: Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: This retrospective study was approved by our institutional ethics review board (Ethics Committee of the university of Leipzig EK: and the requirement for informed consent of patients was waived. Consent for publication: Not applicable. Competing interests: Authors have no conflict of interest., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Background/aim: The recently published Node-Reporting and Data System (Node-RADS) can aid the characterization of lymph nodes in cross-sectional imaging. This study investigated the Node-RADS system in computed tomography (CT) to characterize lymph nodes in esophageal cancer., Patients and Methods: Overall, 126 patients (15 female, 11.9%) with a mean age of 62.1±10.4 years comprised the patient sample. All patients underwent resection with curative intent and the lymph nodes were histopathologically analyzed during clinical routine. For every patient, the locoregional lymph nodes were scored in accordance with the Node-RADS classification. For statistical analysis, receiver-operating characteristics (ROC) with area under the curve (AUC) were used to test for diagnostic accuracy; inter-reader variability was assessed with Cohen's kappa., Results: Overall, 54 patients were nodal positive (42.9%), 72 patients were nodal negative (57.1%). Inter-reader agreement was substantial for the overall Node-RADS scoring ([Formula: see text]=0.65, p<0.001). ROC curve analysis for lymph node discrimination (N0 versus N1-3) showed an AUC of 0.69 (95% confidence interval=0.59-0.79). A threshold score of more than 2 resulted in a sensitivity of 0.77 and a specificity of 0.55 for correctly predicting nodal positivity. Node-RADS 1 category had a malignancy rate of 30%, Node-RADS 2 of 14%, Node-RADS 3 of 81%, Node-RADS 4 of 90.1% and Node-RADS 5 of 86.5%., Conclusion: The Node-RADS score on staging CT is associated with the malignancy rate of lymph nodes in patients with EC with only moderate diagnostic accuracy. The inter-reader variability is moderate, which could pose difficulties for translation into clinical routine., (Copyright © 2025, International Institute of Anticancer Research (Dr. George J. Delinasios), All rights reserved.)