Critical reviews in computed tomography
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Crit Rev Comput Tomogr · Jan 2004
Review Case ReportsRheumatoid arthritis associated interstitial lung disease.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic disease manifest as a symmetric polyarthritis usually in the setting of elevated autoantibodies (rheumatoid factor). This disease affects 1-2% of the world's population, most frequently in the 25-55 year old age group and has a female predominance (2.5:1). Nearly 50% of patients with RA demonstrate some type of extra-articular manifestation of the disease such as pleuritis, pleuropericarditis, vasculitis, pneumonitis, pulmonary fibrosis, scleritis or nodulosis. ⋯ In fact, lung disease is the second most common cause of death, following infection, for patients with RA and has been reported to effect between 1-40% of patients. RA associated interstitial lung disease (ILD) is often subtle in onset, slowly progressive and of unclear etiology and response to treatment. This article aims to clarify the current clinical, radiographic and pathologic status of RA-ILD.
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Crit Rev Comput Tomogr · Jan 2004
ReviewIntracranial pyogenic abscess: imaging diagnosis utilizing recent advances in computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging.
Intracranial abscesses are life-threatening medical emergencies with pyogenic debris accumulating in the brain. Delay in the diagnosis can result in significant morbidity and mortality. ⋯ This paper reviews new advances in CT and MR for imaging patients with suspected brain abscess. The role of computed tomography (CT) perfusion and new magnetic resonance sequences including DWI sequences, ADC map, MR spectroscopy, FLAIR and post-contrast enhanced T1 weighted images will also be discussed.
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Crit Rev Comput Tomogr · Jan 2004
ReviewComputed tomography assessment of lung structure and function in pulmonary edema.
By definition pulmonary edema is an abnormal accumulation of water in the lung. Consequently, the computed tomography (CT) appearance of pulmonary edema reflects the sequence of this accumulation. In early hydrostatic pulmonary edema, CT shows vascular engorgement and peribronchovascular cuffing that increases with the severity of edema and that is associate in late stage, with consolidations. ⋯ Indeed CT can assess lung water noninvasively. Correlated with hydrodynamic parameter, these objective measurements show that the increase of lung density parallels parenchymal fluid overload. These data also show that the occurrence of ground glass opacities can precede the hemodynamic evidence of edema.