PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

C Raffaelli

Publications and source records attributed to C Raffaelli.

22 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMedDate not supplied

Etiologic diagnosis of hepatic lesions in cancer patients. Value of ultrasound and liver function tests.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the value of a combination of ultrasound (US) and liver function tests (LFT) for determination of the benign or malignant nature of one or more hepatic lesions in cancer patients. A total of 1235 patients with hepatic metastases and 832 patients with benign liver lesions investigated by US-LFT over a 12-year period were analyzed retrospectively. Ultrasound patterns considered indicative of a benign process (cyst, calcification without mass, irregular hyperechoic area without mass effect, small hyperechoic focal lesion as less than 3 cm) or malignancy (peritumoral halo, hypoechoic focal lesion, multiple solid nodules) were associated with LFT results. A US pattern of a benign process associated with normal LFT led to a diagnosis of benign disease with a false negative rate for malignancy of 11.6%. The highest figure corresponded to small hyperechoic nodules, for which the positive predictive value of malignancy (PPVM) depended on the type of primary cancer: 2.1% for breast cancer versus 62.5% for colorectal cancer. A US criterion of malignancy associated with abnormal LFT led to a diagnosis of malignancy (PPV 96.2% to 100%). Overall, the combination of US and LFT had a sensitivity of 80.6% and a specificity of 99.4%. The US-LFT combination correctly determined the benign or malignant nature of 74.5% of all hepatic lesions; the PPV was never less than 96.2% (small and solitary hyperechoic focal lesions were excluded because their PPV for malignancy is too high).

Calcinosis↗