[Evaluation of anomalous pulmonary venous connection: comparison between dual-source CT and echocardiography]

This paper is to compare dual-source computed tomography (DSCT) with trans-thoracic echocardiography (TTE) in the evaluation of anomalous pulmonary venous connection (APVC) to explore the advantages of DSCT. Thirty-one patients with APVC detected by DSCT were enrolled in this study. In this cohort, 16 patients underwent echocardiography followed by operative treatments; and among the remained 15 patients who did not received surgical treatment, echocardiography was performed in 10 patients. The numbers and drainage sites of anomalous pulmonary veins, and accompanied defects on DSCT and TTE were retrospectively analyzed. In terms of diagnosis of the numbers and the drainage sites of anomalous pulmonary veins, the accuracy of DSCT was 98% (49/50) and 93.8% (15/16), while the accuracy of echocardiography was 80% (40/50) and 56.3% (9/16), respectively. There were statistical differences between the two modalities (P < 0.05). Although the detection rates of accompanied defects were 89.1% (41/46) and 78.3% (36/46) for DSCT and echocardiography, respectively, no statistically significant difference was found between the two modalities (P > 0.05). The 15 patients without receiving surgical treatments were partial APVC confirmed by DSCT, but APVC was found in 40% (4/10) patients by echocardiography. In conclusion, DSCT could be superior to evaluating APVC in comparison with echocardiography, and should be recommended as an important procedure for preoperative assessment of the anomaly in patients with APVC.