Clinical value of 70 kV combined with low contrast agent CT scan in the diagnosis of pediatric coronary artery disease / 中华放射学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective DSA and/or surgery was used as a control to evaluate the image quality, radiation dose and diagnostic efficacy of 70 kV combined with low contrast agent dose and 80 kV dual-source CT scanning of coronary artery. Methods Between Apr, 2012 and Apr, 2017, a total of 150 consecutive pediatrics with suspected or confirmed coronary arterial diseases underwent DSCTCA, and the patients were randomly divided into 3 groups by different scanning protocols. Group A (n=50) 80 kV with 1.5 ml/kg contrast agent;Group B (n=50) 70 kV with 1.5 ml/kg contrast agent;Group C (n=50) 70 kV with 1.0 ml/kg contrast agent. ANOVA was used to compare the differences of subjective coronary arteries image quality between the three groups; The t-test was used to compare the difference in effective radiation dose between the 70 kV group and the 80 kV group; The surgery and/or angiography results were used as gold standard to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy of the three groups. Results All patients underwent DSCTCA successfully and satisfactory diagnostic images were gained . The mean scores of subjective image quality of coronary artery were 3.5±0.7, 3.4±0.6, 3.7±0.8, respectively. There was no significant difference between the 3 groups (F=2.042, P=0.133). The diagnostic accuracy of the three groups for coronary artery disease was 100%, as the surgical and/or angiographic results were used as gold standard. The effective radiation doses in 80 kV group (A group) and the 70 kV group (B+C group) were (0.49 ± 0.04) and (0.30 ± 0.03) mSv, respectively, with a statistically significant difference (t=4.037, P=0.001). Conclusions DSCTCA can better display and diagnose pediatric coronary artery lesions with 70 kV tube voltage combined with low contrast agent, and has a high diagnostic accuracy. It is a reliable method for diagnosing pediatric coronary artery disease.