PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jennifer Stephens
AU  - Victoria Foy
AU  - Fernando Chang
AU  - Steve Owen
TI  - Incidental findings on CTPA at a district general hospital
DP  - 2012 Sep 01
TA  - European Respiratory Journal
PG  - P647
VI  - 40
IP  - Suppl 56
4099  - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/40/Suppl_56/P647.short
4100  - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/40/Suppl_56/P647.full
SO  - Eur Respir J2012 Sep 01; 40
AB  - BackgroundCT Pulmonary Angiogram (CTPA) is the gold standard investigation for Pulmonary Embolism (PE) in the UK1.Aims Due to the quality of CTPA imaging, incidental findings are often identified.We investigated the incidence of these findings on CTPA studies done at a large district general hospital.MethodsCTPA requests over a 12 month period in 2011 were reviewed retrospectively. Data was collected regarding PE, incidental findings and chest x-ray (CXR) reports at time of CTPA.ResultsA total of 216 CTPA reports were analysed.Results are seen in Table 1.View this table:Table 1 CTPA Incidental FindingsOf the patients who had consolidation on CTPA, 9 (17%) had no consolidation seen on CXR.In those with a pleural effusion on CTPA, 42 (67%) had no effusion on CXR and of the patients who had a malignancy, 21 (75%) had not had this detected on CXR.Out of 216 patients, 15 (6.9%) had no CXR prior to CTPA and 13 (6%) had no formal CXR report.DiscussionAt our centre, CTPA yielded 11% diagnosis rate for PE. A sizeable number of incidental findings were detected resulting in further investigations and treatments of patients. The sensitivity of CXR is not sufficient to rule out consolidation in this set of patients. This study emphasises that CTPA is important in diagnosis of PE, but also in identifying alternative pathologies not seen on routine CXRReferenceBTS Guidelines for the Management of Suspected Acute Pulmonary Embolism. Thorax 2003: 58: 470-484.