| Popis: |
INTRODUCTION: To investigate availability of Short Time Inversion Recovery Turbo Spin Echo Magnetic Resonance imaging (STIR TSE MRI) in the detection of mediastinal lymph nodes and in the distinguishing malign and benign lymph nodes detected in cases with pulmonary lesions. METHODS: Overall, 46 patients having mediastinal lymph nodes with confirmed or suspected lung cancer were included to the study. All patients underwent STIR TSE MR imaging before mediastinoscopy. Lymph nodes were assessed by signal characteristics on STIR TSE MRI. The results of histopathological evaluation and STIR TSE MRI were compared after mediastinoscopy. As data were qualitative, distributions were expressed as percentage and chi-square test was used to determine the difference between variables. RESULTS: Overall, 92 lymph nodes were analyzed. When a comparison was made between malign and benign lymph nodes, a significant difference was found between STIR MRI signal properties of lymph nodes and lymph node size. The specificity, sensitivity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of STIR TSE MRI were estimated as 75.0%, 75.0%, 61.5% and 83.3%, respectively. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Although the negative predictive value is high in STIR TSE MRI, it has a low positive predictive value. Thus, the case may directly undergo surgery without performing mediastinoscopy when no malign lymph node is detected in STIR TSE MRI, while mediastinoscopy is warranted when a malign lymph node is detected. |
