[Computed tomography examination of normal adrenal glands (author's transl)]

Computed tomography was used to examine the adrenal glands of 100 normal subjects. This investigation, which is simple to conduct, and causes only slight disturbance to the subject, was able to identify the right adrenal in 92% of cases and the left gland in 95% of subjects. The morphological aspect of the normal gland is that of an inverted "Y" but the absence of one or both limbs of the "Y" can give an appearance of a comet or a triangle respectively. The contour is always concave or rectilinear, and any tumor which extends beyond the gland should, theoretically, be detectable. Computed tomography is therefore the method of choice for examining normal or pathological adrenal glands, and its reliability and precision appear to be superior to that of ultrasonography.