1. Hepatic iron overload in thalassemic patients: proposal and validation of an MRI method of assessment.
- Author
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Bonetti MG, Castriota-Scanderbeg A, Criconia GM, Mazza P, Sacco M, Amurri B, and Masi C
- Subjects
- Adolescent, Adult, Biopsy, Child, Female, Ferritins blood, Hemochromatosis etiology, Hemochromatosis metabolism, Humans, Liver pathology, Male, Regression Analysis, Reproducibility of Results, beta-Thalassemia blood, beta-Thalassemia complications, Hemochromatosis diagnosis, Iron metabolism, Liver metabolism, Magnetic Resonance Imaging methods, beta-Thalassemia diagnosis
- Abstract
Background: A simple, accurate, reproducible and noninvasive method of body iron overload assessment would be of great clinical use. Objective. The purpose of the study was the implementation of a 0. 5-T MRI method for liver iron overload measurement., Materials and Methods: Thirty patients with thalassemia major took part in the study. Liver and paraspinal muscle signal intensity (SI) measurements were performed on T1-weighted images and normalized on a standard phantom, and a subjective hemochromatosis grading scale was made on both T1- and T2-weighted images. Serum ferritin levels and tissue iron from liver biopsy specimens were determined for comparison., Results: A close correlation was found between bioptic liver iron and both the liver-to-phantom SI ratio (r = -0.88) and the subjective grading scale (rho = 0.89). Serum ferritin correlated poorly with liver iron deposition, whether assessed by biopsy (r = 0. 62) or MRI (r = -0.69)., Conclusions: Both the subjective and the quantitative MRI methods proposed here are clinically valuable, with the former being adequate for a gross, the latter for an accurate estimation of tissue iron overload.
- Published
- 1996
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