"Impact With Imaging"

After an amazing ECVDI Congress in Athens, we are back in business! A new Veterinary Radiology and Ultrasound issue is out, and here they are my 3 favorite articles from September 2024 issue:

1) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38708438/

Intra- and interobserver agreement in computed tomography localization of primary nonhematopoietic hepatic masses and comparison with surgical and histopathological outcomes in 21 cats (Bentley et al.)

I'm always incredibly happy when I see collaboration between surgeons and imagers.

Looks like we do better compared to dogs in localizing hepatic masses!

The hepatic division and hepatic lobe of origin of the mass was correctly localized in 76% of the cats (for both the division and the lobe). Good job!

In a previous study in dogs, the localization of the hepatic division was correct from 83% to 93% of cases, but the hepatic lobe... omg... not so encouraging, masses were correctly localized in the hepatic lobe of origin in only 56% of case... can someone try again please? I have the feeling we could do better, but maybe I'm wrong.

Anyway, just remember to do your best when you report an hepatic mass and try always to mention both the division and the lobe, maybe reminding to the surgeon how more or less good we are in doing that for both cats and dogs!

2) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38706413/

Computed tomographic findings in canine and feline heart base tumors (25 cases) (Ruiz de Alejos Blanco et al.)

Very nice article with a relatively good number of heart base tumors. This article will help us in being more specific when concluding on heart base masses with some objective data that may support our differential diagnosis priority.

a) Neovascularization was associated with 76% of the neuroendocrine tumors, but none of the hemangiosarcoma. So, if you find neovascularization, please remove HSA from your differential diagnosis.

b) Median postcontrast attenuation in HU was higher in neuroendocrine (110HU) than in hemangiosarcoma (51HU). I think it completely makes sense if we think about the blood-filled cavitary lesions that usually are within HSA.

c) Pericardial effusion was frequently observed with hemangiosarcoma (75%) and infrequently in neuroendocrine (14%). HSA tends to be detected earlier compared to other heart base tumors, this because they usually rupture causing hemopericardium with cardiac tamponade. If you look to Table 2, you can see that the median size of HSA is smaller compared to the rest of the heart base tumors.

3)https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/vru.13398#:~:text=In%20conclusion%2C%20presumed%20EPJF%20was,underlying%20pathology%20and%20clinical%20relevance.

(I didn't find it on Pubmed, sorry!)

Prevalence of presumed endplate junction failure at the lumbosacral intervertebral junction in dogs on computed tomography (Tellegen et al.)

Another article discussing the endplates irregularity of the lumbosacral junction, that could be read together with another nice article recently published ("Lumbosacral endplate contour defect is frequently observed concurrent with other lumbosacral abnormalities on spinal CT of French Bulldogs").

Just pay attention, in Figure 1 and 2, the legends are switched.

Lumbosacral endplate junction failure was observed in 1/5 of dogs and associated with:

1) increasing age and bodyweight

2) presence of degenerative changes to the lumbosacral spine.

Shall we still talk about sacral OCD?