Color Doppler sonography of focal gastrointestinal lesions: initial clinical experience

Graded compression color Doppler sonography was used to evaluate gastrointestinal blood flow in 20 normal fasting subjects and 32 patients with focal gastrointestinal lesions. Imaging was optimized for color sensitivity using a 5 MHz linear array transducer. Criteria were established for normal mural blood flow based on findings in normal controls. Two reviewers blinded to the final diagnosis compared patterns of mural vascularity in normal and abnormal patients. Increased mural blood flow was demonstrated in all 32 patients with gastrointestinal inflammatory disorders and in seven of nine patients with neoplasms. No mural flow was demonstrated in four patients with small bowel infarction. The greatest overall degree of flow was noted in patients with Crohn's disease and cytomegalovirus colitis. Flow in tumors was variable, ranging from strikingly increased flow in a giant villoglandular polyp to absent flow in a metastasis from lung carcinoma. Our preliminary experience suggests that the presence of considerable overlap in the color Doppler patterns of mural blood flow in inflammatory and neoplastic lesions. Color Doppler sonography alone without spectral waveform analysis may not distinguish focal inflammatory from neoplastic disorders of the gastrointestinal tract reliably. However, this technique potentially may be useful in diagnosing small bowel ischemia when thickened segments of small bowel are identified with absent flow.