Mohamed Elmutasim Abd El Bagi
King Abdulaziz Medical City, KSA
Title: Don’t cry for me radiographia: Plain abdominal radiographs for non-traumatic acute abdominal pain
Biography
Biography: Mohamed Elmutasim Abd El Bagi
Abstract
This presentation aims to report the outcome of plain abdominal radiographs PAR’s when used as initial test for acute non-traumatic abdominal pain (ANAP). This retrospective study was conducted at an Emergency Department (ED) of a tertiary care centre. We included all patients aged 15 years and above who have presented to our ED with ANTAP and referred for PAR’s during the period from 01-06-2014 to 30-06-2014. 15140 patients visited our ED with a variety of presentations. PAR’s were requested for 756 of them due to ANTAP. 379 (49.6%) of those were males and 385 (50.4%) were females. Age range was 15 to 92 years. Mean age was 46 years. Commonest presentation was unclassified abdominal pain in 679 (89.8%). PAR's alone were requested for the vast majority of cases 594 (78.57%). In 103 (13.6%) conventional dose contrasted CT was added and in 33 (4.3%) low dose CT was added. Abdominal ultrasound (US) was added in 52 (6.8%). MRI was added for only one patient. When both PAR's and CT were used, there was a poor diagnostic congruence of 68.9% in non-specific or non-significant cases and only 35.7% in abnormal cases. Despite availability of CT and other modalities, PAR’s are still the commonest one stop shop imaging test requested by the ED for ANTAP. When both CT and PAR’s were used, there was a poor congruence of findings indicating lower accuracy of PAR’s. Controlled trials are necessary to see if PAR’s can be replaced by CT. Our finding matched other workers except for higher sensitivity of our PAR’s for urolithiasis.