PURPOSE: To demonstrate advantages of spectral dual-layer computed tomography (CT) in diagnosing pulmonary embolism (PE). To compare D-dimer values in patients with PE and concomitant COVID-19 pneumonia to those in patients without PE and COVID-19 pneumonia. To compare D-dimer values in cases of minor versus extensive PE. METHODS: A monocentric retrospective study of 1500 CT pulmonary angiographies (CTPAs). Three groups of 500 consecutive examinations: 1) using conventional multidetector CT (CTC), 2) using spectral dual-layer CT (CTS), and 3) of COVID-19 pneumonia patients using spectral dual-layer CT (COV). Only patients with known D-dimer levels were enrolled in the study. RESULTS: Prevalence of inconclusive PE findings differed significantly between CTS and CTC (0.8 % vs. 5.4 %, p < 0.001). In all groups, D-dimer levels were significantly higher in PE positive patients than in patients without PE (CTC, 8.04 vs. 3.05 mg/L; CTS, 6.92 vs. 2.57 mg/L; COV, 10.26 vs. 2.72 mg/L, p < 0.001). There were also statistically significant differences in D-dimer values between minor and extensive PE in the groups negative for COVID-19 (CTC, 5.16 vs. 8.98 mg/L; CTS 3.52 vs. 9.27 mg/L, p < 0.001). The lowest recorded D-dimer value for proven PE in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia was 1.19 mg/L. CONCLUSION: CTPAs using spectral dual-layer CT reduce the number of inconclusive PE findings. Plasma D-dimer concentration increases with extent of PE. Cut-off value of D-dimer with 100 % sensitivity for patients with COVID-19 pneumonia could be doubled to 1.0 mg/L. This threshold would have saved 110 (22 %) examinations in our cohort.
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BACKGROUND: The evaluation of DWI/FLAIR mismatch in ischaemic stroke patients with unknown, time from onset can determine the treatment strategy. This approach is based on, visual assessment and may be subject to insufficient inter-rater agreement. OBJECTIVE: To compare the inter-rater agreement of visual evaluation of FLAIR MRI and proposed region of interest (ROI) semiquantitative method in large vessel occlusion (LVO) strokes. METHODS: Five readers have analysed MRIs of 104 patients obtained within six hours of the onset of stroke symptoms resulting from LVO visually and semi-quantitatively. For the semiquantitative analysis, a ROI method was used to obtain relative signal intensity compared to the unaffected side. Cut-off values of 1.15 and 1.10 were tested. The analysis yielded FLAIR-positive (abnormal) and negative (normal) findings. Percentage agreement and Fleiss kappa coefficients were calculated. RESULTS: The visual agreement of 5/5 readers and ≥ 4/5 readers occurred in 31% and 59% of cases respectively. Semi-quantitative evaluation using a cut-off value of 1.15 increased the agreements to 67% and 88% respectively. The agreement of visual evaluation was fair. The semi-quantitative method utilising the cut-off of 1.15 had moderate agreement although it increased the number of FLAIR-negative results compared to the visual evaluation. A low cut-off value of 1.10 didn't improve the agreement significantly. CONCLUSION: The inter-rater agreement of visual evaluation of FLAIR in patients with short-duration large vessel occlusion stroke was fair. The high cut-off value of semiquantitative evaluation increased the agreement although it changed the proportion of FLAIR positive and negative results.
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