IJ Radiology
Mehrdad Bakhshayesh Karam1, Shahram Kahkouee1, Makhtoum Shahnazi2, Leila Sourtji1, 
Mohammad Ali Karimi3,*Diagnosis of chronic pulmonary fibrosing diseases is dependent on biopsy which is an invasive procedure that cannot be done in some patients. A noninvasive accurate diagnostic tool such as HRCT can obviate the need for biopsy.
The aim of this study was to assess the diagnostic accuracy of HRCT for nonspecific intrestitial pneumonitis (NSIP), usual intrestitial pneumonitis (UIP) and chronic hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP).
HRCT images of 57 patients (22 NSIPs, 21UIPs, and 14 chronic HPs) were reviewed by two pulmonary radiologists in a blinded way. The radiologic diagnosis was compared with pathologically proven diagnosis, and sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and diagnostic accuracy as well as reliability were determined.
Confident diagnosis by HRCT was made in 66% of patients. The diagnosis in 93.1% of cases which were confidently diagnosed by both radiologists was consistent with histopathology. The overall agreement between two radiologists in all three diseases was fair. However, in the cases with confident diagnosis by both radiologists the agreement was excellent, especially for NSIP (Kappa = 0.86). The diagnostic accuracy of HRCT for NSIP, UIP and chronic HP was 82%, 73% and 87.5%, respectively. Sensitivity, specificity, PPV, and NPV for all of these diseases were almost acceptable (71-100%).
HRCT is a highly accurate method for diagnosis of NSIP, UIP, and chronic HP. Biopsy could be avoided in case of confident agreement between two radiologists in their HRCT based diagnosis of NSIP.
Full text is available in PDF
© 2014, Author(s). This open-access article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.
Leave a comment here
Purchasing Reprints
Author(s):
