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Diagnostic performance of MRI for pregnant patients with clinically suspected appendicitis

Abdominal Radiology volume 43, pages 3456–3461 (2018)Cite this article

Abstract

Purpose

To evaluate the accuracy of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the diagnosis of acute appendicitis in pregnant patients and the value of additional diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI).

Methods

A total of 125 pregnant patients with clinically suspected appendicitis who underwent 1.5 T MRI were enrolled between May 2011 and January 2016. During this period, two radiologists prospectively predicted acute appendicitis on MRI during daily interpretation. We retrospectively reviewed clinical records, and radiological results were correlated with surgical pathology and clinical outcomes. We calculated the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of MRI for diagnosing acute appendicitis. We performed additional DWI between August 2014 and January 2016, and we calculated sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of MRI with or without DWI.

Results

The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of MRI for acute appendicitis were 100%, 95%, and 96%, respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of MRI without DWI (n = 72) vs. with DWI (n = 53) were 100%, 94.7%, and 95.8% versus 100%, 95%, and 96%, respectively.

Conclusions

MRI has high accuracy for the diagnosis of acute appendicitis in pregnant patients. Therefore, MRI is recommended for use as a first-line diagnostic test for pregnant patients with clinically suspected appendicitis.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, CHA Bundang Medical Center, CHA University, 351 Yatap-dong, Bundang-gu, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, 463-712, Korea

    Sung Ah Wi, Dae Jung Kim & Kyoung Ah Kim

  2. Department of Radiology, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Gangnam Severance Hospital, Seoul, Korea

    Eun-Suk Cho

Authors
  1. Sung Ah Wi
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  2. Dae Jung Kim
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  3. Eun-Suk Cho
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  4. Kyoung Ah Kim
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dae Jung Kim.

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Conflict of interest

All authors declare no conflicts of interest or sources of funding.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and were in accord with the Helsinki Declaration of 1964 and later versions.

Informed consent

This study was described after approval by the institutional review board, and the requirement for informed consent from individual patients was waived.

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Wi, S.A., Kim, D.J., Cho, ES. et al. Diagnostic performance of MRI for pregnant patients with clinically suspected appendicitis. Abdom Radiol 43, 3456–3461 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00261-018-1654-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00261-018-1654-5

Keywords

  • Pregnancy
  • Magnetic resonance imaging
  • Appendix
  • Appendicitis