[Optimizing intravenous bolus contrast medium injection in cervical CT diagnosis].

PURPOSE: A prospective, comparative study of 60 patients for optimizing contrast medium (CM) administration for spiral CT of the neck.

METHODS

Prior to the investigation, the patients were randomly assigned to three groups (n = 20 each): a) conventional CT technique, interscan duration 10 s, CM volume 150 ml of Ultravist 300 (30 ml at a flow rate of 1.5 ml/s, the remaining 120 ml as maintenance dosage of 0.5 ml/s); b) so-called dynamic CT technique, interscan duration 5 s, CM volume 100 ml (200 ml at a flow rate of 2 ml/s and 80 ml with a flow rate of 0.5 ml/s); c) spiral CT technique, total investigation time to store the crude data was 30 s, a CM dosage of 50 ml at a flow rate of 2 ml/s (30 ml) in the first phase and 0.7 ml/s (20 ml) in the second phase was studied.

RESULTS

The current evaluation of the CM time-density course, image quality, diagnostic efficiency, and investigation time showed that a good to very good contrast medium enhancement of the neck vessels was achieved in all groups so that pathological findings were well differentiated.

CONCLUSIONS

The CM volume could be reduced to a third of the original used amount without loss of diagnostic security by use of the spiral CT technique.