Internal Medicine: Open Access
Open Access

Do not cry for me radiographia: Plain abdominal radiographs for non-traumatic acute abdominal pain

International Conference on Internal Medicine

October 31-November 02, 2016 San Francisco, USA

Mohamed Elmutasim Abd El Bagi, B Almutairi, S Alsolami, I Alrashidi, S Alrashid and M Reutener

King Abdulaziz Medical City, KSA

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Intern Med

Abstract :

This presentation aims to report the outcome of plain abdominal radiographs PAR�s when used as initial test for acute nontraumatic abdominal pain (ANAP). This retrospective study was conducted at an Emergency Department (ED) of a tertiary care centre. We included all patients aged 15 years and above who have presented to our ED with ANTAP and referred for PAR�s during the period from 01-06-2014 to 30-06-2014. 15140 patients visited our ED with a variety of presentations. PAR�s were requested for 756 of them due to ANTAP. 379 (49.6%) of those were males and 385 (50.4%) were females. Age range was 15 to 92 years. Mean age was 46 years. Commonest presentation was unclassified abdominal pain in 679 (89.8%). PAR's alone were requested for the vast majority of cases 594 (78.57%). In 103 (13.6%) conventional dose contrasted CT was added and in 33 (4.3%) low dose CT was added. Abdominal ultrasound (US) was added in 52 (6.8%). MRI was added for only one patient. When both PAR's and CT were used, there was a poor diagnostic congruence of 68.9% in non-specific or non-significant cases and only 35.7% in abnormal cases. Despite availability of CT and other modalities, PAR�s are still the commonest one stop shop imaging test requested by the ED for ANTAP. When both CT and PAR�s were used, there was a poor congruence of findings indicating lower accuracy of PAR�s. Controlled trials are necessary to see if PAR�s can be replaced by CT. Our finding matched other workers except for higher sensitivity of our PAR�s for urolithiasis.

Biography :

Mohamed Elmutasim Abd El Bagi is a Consultant Radiologist at the National Guard Hospital of King Abdulaziz Medical City in Riyadh. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Radiologists, London and a Fellow of the Faculty of Radiologists at the Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland. He has obtained his Master’s degree in Total Quality Management from Ribat University and was a Professor of Radiology at the National University in Khartoum.

Email: abdelbagimo@ngha.med.sa