Comparison of multi-slice CT findings between malignant focal pulmonary ground-glass opacity nodules and solid nodules of 3 cm or less / 中华放射学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To compare the MSCT findings of malignant focal pulmonary ground-glass opacity nodules (fGGO) and solid nodules of 3 cm or less, and try to find specific signs in fGGO. Methods Clinical data (sex ratio, age), size of lesion and MSCT findings (shape, margin, interface, internal characteristics, adjacent structure) of 105 cases pathologically confirmed to have solid lung cancers and 48 cases with fGGO less than 3 cm were retrospectively analyzed. Differences were analyzed by using the Fisher exact test or Mann-Whitney U test. Results The male and female ratio of solid lung cancer(6045) were higher than that of fGGO (1830, X~2 value 5.09, P<0.05). But no differences were found in age and size of lesion (P value 0.200,0.673). For solid lung cancer, the incidence of round shape (n=101), irregular (n=4), speculation (n=60), vacuole sign (n=12) and air bronchograms (n=0) were significantly different from those of fGGO (38, 10, 19,25 and 7, respectively), and the corresponding (X~2 values were 11.48,4.07,29.70 and 22.38 respectively, P<0.05). No differences were found in lobulation, cusp angle, spine-like process, well-defined, coarse, ill-defined interface, honey-combing, pleural indentation sign and blood vessel cluster sign (there are 85,0,33,5,100,0,0,59,35 cases for solid cancer, and 42,1,15,3,45,0,2,32,16 for fGGO (X~2 values 1.00,2.20, 0.00,0.15, 4.43,1.50, 0.00, P>0.05). Conclusions Malignant fGGO and solid lung cancer manifest mostly similar MSCT features. The frequency of irregular shape, vacuole sign and air bronchograms was higher in fGGO than in solid lung cancer to some degree, but speculation is more infrequent in fGGO, which may be attribute to thepathological type and basis of tumor.