ABSTRACT
Objective To evaluate the role of adrenal venons sampling (AVS) in differential diagnosis of subtypes in primary aldosteronism.Methods Twenty-two patients diagnosed as primary aldosteronism in the Third Central Hospital of Tianjin from November 201 1 to July 2014, were undergone AVS for measurement of plasma aldosterone and cortisol levels in each adrenal vein and infrarenal inferior vena cava.The data were compared with the results of the thin slice incremental scanning in adrenal and postoperative pathologic diagnosis.Other 8 patients, whose screening test and confirmed diagnosis did not support the primary aldosteronism, with nodule larger than 4 cm pathologically confirmed as non-functioning adrenal adenoma, were also recruited.Results Among all the 22 patients with primary aldosteronism, the incidence rate of hypertention was 95.4％, and the incidence of hypokalemia was 81.8％.Compared with idiopathic hyperaldosteronism patients, the patients with aldosterone producing adenoma had higher blood pressure and aldosterone level in plasma, but lower plasma potassium, while the clinical and biochemical index of the non-functioning adrenal adenoma group were within the normal range.The overall accuracy rate of adrenal CT in the diagnosis of subtypes of primary aldosteronism was 77.27％ (17/22), and the accuracy rates were 78.95％ (15/19) in aldosterone producing adenoma and 66.7％ (2/3) in idiopathic hyperaldosteronism, respectively.The accuracy rate of AVS was 100％ with the ratio of aldosterone to cortisol as the criterion.Conclusions Misdiagnose may occur when using CT scan only to differentially diagnose primary aldosteronism.Compared with CT imaging of the adrenal glands, AVS has higher coincidence rate and is an elective approach to establish the subtype diagnosis of questionable primary aldosteronism.