A FIVE YEAR FOLLOW-UP OF ROUTINE SURVEY ROENTGENOGRAMS OF THE ABDOMEN ON 500 CONSECUTIVE PATIENTS OVER 40 YEARS OF AGE

¹ Third year medical student, University of Kentucky College of Medicine
² From the Department of Radiology, University of Kentucky Medical Center, Lexington, Kentucky

A previous study was made of 500 Consecutive routine survey roentgenograms of the abdomen on patients over 40 years of age admitted to the University of Kentucky Medical Center. Of these 500 roentgenograms, 35 showed pathology unsuspected on an initial clinical evaluation and 52 revealed suggestive evidence of pathology requiring additional studies. A 5 year follow-up study of these 87 individuals revealed that only 7 patients (1.4 per cent of the original 500) developed symptoms relevant to the reported roentgen findings. The low yield and relatively minor nature of much of the discovered pathology suggest, in contrast to our original conclusions, that a routine survey roentgenogram of the abdomen is probably not justified.

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?