Correlation between dual-phase dynamic multi-detector CT findings and fibrosis within lung adenocarcinoma tumors.
OBJECTIVE
We focused on fibrosis within lung adenocarcinoma tumors in order to retrospectively analyze correlations with dual-phase contrast enhanced dynamic CT findings.


METHODS
We evaluated 89 patients with stage I lung adenocarcinoma who underwent dynamic CT scans (80-96 mL of contrast material, 2.5-3 mL/s injection) and tumor resections. Attenuation values of both the early phase (21-37 s after injection) and the delay phase (91-95 s) of enhanced CT minus the baseline plain CT attenuation were calculated as ΔEarly and ΔDelay. An early enhancement ratio was defined as ΔEarly/ΔDelay×100. These enhancement patterns were compared with patient and tumor characteristics, including scar grades that were the degrees of fibrosis within tumors evaluated semi-quantitatively by pathologists.


RESULTS
From multivariate analysis, only the tumor scar grade showed significant correlations with ΔEarly (p<0.001) and the early enhancement ratio (p<0.001). For ΔEarly and the early enhancement ratio, there were significant differences among 4 groups based on tumor scar grades (p=0.003 and p=0.006, respectively); a higher scar grade tumor tended to show lower enhancement at the early phase.


CONCLUSIONS
There was a significant negative correlation between the amount of fibrosis and the enhancement grade at the early phase of contrast enhanced dynamic CT in stage I lung adenocarcinoma. Dynamic CT findings could be modified by the degree of fibrosis within a lung tumor.
Department of Radiology, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, and Department of Pathology and Clinical Laboratories, Nagoya University Hospital, 65 Tsurumai-cho, Shouwa-ku, Nagoya 4668550, Japan. iwano45@med.nagoya-u.ac.jp
Shingo
S
Iwano
Wataru
W
Koike
Keiji
K
Matsuo
Tohru
T
Okada
Yoshie
Y
Shimoyama
Shinji
S
Naganawa
D000230:Adenocarcinoma / Q000150:complications* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000150:complications* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011658:Pulmonary Fibrosis / Q000150:complications* / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*