The study included children younger than 5 years of age (mean, 14 months) who had either a contrast-enhanced (n = 240) or noncontrast CT (n = 103) on a third-generation dual-source CT scanner. The scans were carried out without sedation while the patients breathed freely -- in a scan that lasted a mean 0.23 seconds. In addition, a pediatric nurse practitioner was present to help calm the patients.
Nearly all patients (96%) had either no motion artifact over the length of the thorax or motion artifact that did not affect the diagnoses, the researchers said. Scans were nondiagnostic due to motion artifacts in fewer than 4% of patients, and after a second scan using the same protocol, only one patient remained with a nondiagnostic scan.
"High-quality chest CT angiography can be routinely obtained in freely breathing infants and young children when evaluated with high-temporal resolution, making sedation and anesthesia unnecessary," Dr. Martine Rémy-Jardin, PhD, head of thoracic imaging in Calmette Hospital, wrote in an email to AuntMinnie.com. "Diagnostic image quality is obtained with a single examination in 96.2% of children scanned while freely breathing."
