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Body packing: a review of general background, clinical and imaging aspects

  • EMERGENCY RADIOLOGY
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Abstract

To avoid detection at border crossings or airport customs, drug trafficking is increasingly performed by intra-corporeal concealment. Body packers may ingest packets of varying size and containing varying drugs (mostly cocaine, heroin and cannabis) mixed with other compounds, while body pushers will insert packets in the rectum or vaginal cavity. Body packing may lead to potential life-threatening complications with acute overdose syndromes after packet rupture and intestinal obstruction with possible ensuing bowel rupture being the most significant complications. Physicians including radiologists should be aware of the capabilities of imaging techniques to screen for presence of drug packets as well as the potential complications. Although conventional radiography has long been and still is the most important imaging modality for screening for presence of intestinal packets, the better test characteristics in conjunction with the decreasing radiation exposure, will likely render computed tomography (CT) more important in the future. For imaging of symptomatic patients, CT already is the modality of choice. Besides these modalities, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging will be discussed in this paper, together with more general background and clinical information.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Ferco H. Berger

  2. Department of Radiology, UZ Brussel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Koenraad H. Nieboer

  3. Department of Radiology, The Alfred, Melbourne, Australia

    Gerard S. Goh

  4. Department of Radiology, Cardarelli Hospital, Naples, Italy

    Antonio Pinto

  5. Department of Diagnostic Imaging, Pineta Grande Medical Center, Caserta, Italy

    Mariano Scaglione

Authors
  1. Ferco H. Berger
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  2. Koenraad H. Nieboer
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  3. Gerard S. Goh
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  4. Antonio Pinto
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  5. Mariano Scaglione
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Correspondence to Ferco H. Berger.

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Berger, F.H., Nieboer, K.H., Goh, G.S. et al. Body packing: a review of general background, clinical and imaging aspects. Radiol med 120, 118–132 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11547-014-0458-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11547-014-0458-0

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