The impact of routine admission abdominal sonography on patient care.
In a prospective study of 1000 consecutive patients, abdominal sonography added diagnostic information to that available by history and physical examination in 8.9%. The yield ranged from a high of 27.4% in patients with acute abdominal symptoms to a low of 2.7% in screening sonograms of patients without abdominal symptoms. Sonographically guided biopsy-proven diagnoses were obtained in 6.6% of the patients and were clinically not suspected in 4.4%. The percentage of false-positive and false-negative sonographic studies was 0.5% and 1.1%, respectively. Sonography shortened the duration of hospitalization in 15.3%.
D000005:Abdomen; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003955:Diagnostic Tests, Routine; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011446:Prospective Studies; D014463:Ultrasonography