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Published on: January 16, 2019
The impact of routine admission abdominal sonography on patient care
J J Verbanck1, F Van Aelst, L Rutgeerts
1Department of Medicine, H. Hart Hospitaal, Roeselare, Belgium.
Abstract:
In a prospective study of 1000 consecutive patients, abdominal sonography added diagnostic information to that available by history and physical examination in 8.9%. The yield ranged from a high of 27.4% in patients with acute abdominal symptoms to a low of 2.7% in screening sonograms of patients without abdominal symptoms. Sonographically guided biopsy-proven diagnoses were obtained in 6.6% of the patients and were clinically not suspected in 4.4%. The percentage of false-positive and false-negative sonographic studies was 0.5% and 1.1%, respectively. Sonography shortened the duration of hospitalization in 15.3%.
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