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Objective: To retrospectively compare portal venous phase (PVP) and delayed phase (DP) for the detection of tumor washout at gadobenate dimeglumine-enhanced liver magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in cirrhotic patients with hypervascular hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)., Methods: Thirty-three patients with 55 HCCs underwent 1.5-T MRI by means of fat-suppressed T1-weighted sequence obtained before and after gadobenate dimeglumine administration, during early and late arterial phases, PVP (70 seconds), and DP (180 seconds). Detection rates of contrast washout of hypervascular HCCs and tumor-to-liver contrast on PVP and DP were measured and compared., Results: Among 54 hypervascular HCCs, washout was present in 24 (44%) of 54 tumors on PVP and in 44 (82%) of 54 on DP (P < 0.001). In 20 (37%) of 54 tumors, washout was deemed present only on DP. Delayed phase images yielded significantly higher mean tumor-to-liver contrast absolute values compared with PVP images (-24.5 [56.1] vs -9.3 [52.6], P = 0.001)., Conclusions: Delayed phase is superior to PVP for the washout detection of hypervascular HCC at gadobenate dimeglumine-enhanced MRI of cirrhotic liver.

Abstract: This study aimed to evaluate the clinical value of automated breast volume scanner (ABVS) compared with hand-held ultrasound (HHUS). From January 2015 to May 2019, a total of 912 breast lesions in 725 consecutive patients were included in this study. κ statistics were calculated to identify interobserver agreement of ABVS and HHUS. The diagnostic performance for ABVS and HHUS was expressed as the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, as well as the corresponding 95% confidence interval, sensitivity, and specificity. The sensitivities of ABVS and HHUS were 95.95% and 93.69%, and the specificities were 85.47% and 81.20%, respectively. A difference that nearly reached statistical significance was observed in sensitivities between ABVS and HHUS (P = 0.0525). The specificity of ABVS was significantly higher than that of HHUS (P = 0.006). When lesions were classified according to their maximum diameter, the sensitivity and specificity of ABVS were significantly higher than HHUS for lesions ≤20 mm, while they made no statistical significance between ABVS and HHUS for lesions >20 mm. The interobserver agreement for ABVS was better than that of HHUS. Automated breast volume scanner was more valuable than HHUS in diagnosing breast cancer, especially for lesions ≤20 mm, and it could be a valuable diagnostic tool for breast cancer., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: The aim of the study is to investigate the values of intratumoral and peritumoral regions based on mammography and magnetic resonance imaging for the prediction of Ki-67 and human epidermal growth factor (HER-2) status in breast cancer (BC)., Methods: Two hundred BC patients were consecutively enrolled between January 2017 and March 2021 and divided into training (n = 133) and validation (n = 67) groups. All the patients underwent breast mammography and magnetic resonance imaging screening. Features were derived from intratumoral and peritumoral regions of the tumor and selected using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression to build radiomic signatures (RSs). Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis and the DeLong test were performed to assess and compare each RS., Results: For each modality, the combined RSs integrating features from intratumoral and peritumoral regions always showed better prediction performance for predicting Ki-67 and HER-2 status compared with the RSs derived from intratumoral or peritumoral regions separately. The multimodality and multiregional combined RSs achieved the best prediction performance for predicting the Ki-67 and HER-2 status with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.888 and 0.868 in the training cohort and 0.800 and 0.848 in the validation cohort, respectively., Conclusions: Peritumoral areas provide complementary information to intratumoral regions of BC. The developed multimodality and multiregional combined RSs have good potential for noninvasive evaluation of Ki-67 and HER-2 status in BC., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Biliary strictures frequently occur in living-donor liver transplant (LDLT) recipients. However, long-term clinical outcomes and their associated factors are unclear., Methods: We analyzed an historical cohort of 228 recipients who underwent LDLT with post-liver transplantation biliary strictures. Endoscopic retrograde cholangiography or percutaneous transhepatic biliary drainage were performed to treat biliary strictures. Patients that experienced persistent jaundice over 3 mo after the initial treatment were defined as a remission-failure group., Results: Median observation period was 8.5 y after the diagnosis of biliary stricture. The 15-y graft survival (GS) rate was 70.6%, and 15-y rate of developing portal hypertension (PH) was 26.1%. Remission failure occurred in 25.0% of study participants. In the multivariate analysis, biopsy-proven acute rejection, and portal vein/hepatic artery abnormalities were risk factors for remission failure. Development of PH, retransplantation, and death were significantly more frequent in the remission-failure group. Remission failure and PH were associated with poor GS. In multivariate analyses, hepatic artery abnormality and biloma were common significant factors that were associated with a poor GS and development of PH., Conclusions: The insufficient blood supply reflected by hepatic artery abnormality and biloma might be the most important factor that can predict poor long-term survival in LDLT patients with biliary strictures. Future large-scale prospective studies are needed to validate our observations., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the interreader agreement in evaluation 68Ga-prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) PET/CT according to three current criteria European association of nuclear medicine, PROMISE with miTNM, and PSMA-RADS in newly diagnosed prostate cancer (PC) patients., Methods: The images of 101 patients who had been diagnosed with PC and underwent 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT at the time of initial staging were evaluated according to the three interpretation criteria by two nuclear medicine specialists. Local tumor, pelvic lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis were evaluated separately. Abdominal lymph nodes, bone and visceral organ metastases were additionally evaluated as subregions of distant metastatic sites. Patients were evaluated in subgroups Gleason score ≥8 or prostate-specific antigen ≥20 ng/mL as the high-risk group (HR) and prostate-specific antigen ≤ 20 ng/mL and Gleason score <8 as the low-risk group (LR). To measure interreader agreement for each judgment site Cohen's Kappa statistic coefficient (κ) was calculated., Results: All three criteria European association of nuclear medicine, PROMISE with miTNM and PSMA-RADS exhibit substantial and almost perfect agreement between the readers in all sites except for PSMA-RADS in bone and visceral metastasis (κ = 0.495, κ = 0.506, respectively). According to the risk groups, a remarkable difference in interreader agreement for bone metastasis for all three criteria (especially in PSMA-RADS) between the HR and LR patients was detected., Conclusions: In low-risk patients especially PSMA-RADS criteria leads to increased interreader reporting differences. While evaluating 68Ga-PSMA PET/CT images it should be considered that pretreatment risk levels of PC patients could affect the interreader agreement., (Copyright © 2021 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Liver transplantation is a cure to many devastating acute and end-stage liver diseases. In the immediate postoperative period, patients are prone to graft, end-organ, and immunosuppressive complications. This article reviews the causes, diagnosis, and treatment of acute postoperative liver transplant complications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim is to investigate the patterns of computed tomography pulmonary angiography (CTPA) use and adherence to current guidelines. Medical records of patients investigated with CTPA for pulmonary embolism (PE) in a single academic hospital from January 2011 until December 2012 were reviewed. Wells scores were calculated retrospectively by researchers blinded to the results of the CTPA. "Avoidable imaging" was defined as imaging performed against current recommendations of the European Society of Cardiology or the PIOPED investigation group. A total of 646 patients underwent testing; 61 cases of PE were diagnosed (9.4%). Potentially avoidable imaging was performed in 49.5% and 71.5% of patients, depending on the criteria used; 11.5% of imaging studies were performed in low-risk patients with negative D-dimer assays. There is evidence of CTPA overuse and D-dimer underuse. Adherence to guidelines and appropriate use of D-dimer assay might reduce avoidable imaging and ionizing radiation exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]