J Nucl Med. 2008; 49 (Supplement 1):38P
General Clinical Specialties: GastroenterologyStomach, Esophagus and Pancreas |
The efficiency of currently introduced interpretation methods in the evaluation of gastroesophageal reflux (GER) scintigraphy
Murat Tuncel1,
Tamer Aksoy1,
Fani Bozkurt1 and
Pinar Kiratli1
1 Nuclear Medicine, Hacettepe Univ., Ankara, Turkey
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Objectives: The aim of this study is to find out the comparative efficiencies of time activity curves(TAC) and condensed images(CI) in respect to visual interpretation(VI) in GER scintigraphy.
Methods: 49 children who underwent GER scintigraphy were included. Dynamic images (16 sec/fr, 64x64 matrix) were obtained with a gamma camera (Siemens-ECAM) after oral administration of 200 µCi Tc99m colloid or DTPA mixed in milk in fasting state. Scintigraphic images were interpreted by; VI, TAC and CI on work station (GE-Xeleris) by 4 nuclear medicine physcians(P) independently. The disconcordant results among interpreters were resolved by consensus reading and accepted as final report.
Results: There were 22 patients with (-) and 27 patients with (+) GER scintigraphy. When the consensus reading was accepted as reference, the sensitivity (S), specificity (Sp), positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV) and accuracy (A) of physcians with VI are given in table. VI showed significantly better correlation with the consensus reading and less inter-reader variability compared to TAC and CI methods, using Spearman correlation coefficient (SCC). CI can be helpful in the clinic but the TAC method seems to have no clinical value.
Conclusions: The visual interpretation remains to be the most efficient method for the evaluation of GER scintigraphy.
