Background:
Anemia is a major global disease burden factor linked to an adverse impact on overall prognosis and negatively affects the quality of life. Some suggested findings for anemia on non-contrast chest CT, like relatively dense interventricular septum (septal sign) or fairly dense aortic wall (aortic ring sign). The measured attenuation value is a reproducible physical density measurement, readily obtainable from a standard CT examination. There is no reliable cut-off for blood attenuation to suggest anemia on the non-contrast chest CT. The current study evaluated subjective and objective criteria’ diagnostic accuracy for diagnosing anemia on unenhanced thoracic CT.
Methods:
Patients admitted to our academic hospital between June 2019 to March 2020 were candidates to be enrolled in this retrospective study. For the subjective assessment, the radiologists were asked to record the presence or absence of the “Aortic Ring Sign” and “Interventricular Septum Sign.” For the objective evaluations, blood density was measured at various anatomic locations.
Results:
A total of 325 patients were included in this study. There was a significant correlation between blood attenuation in all measured segments and Hb level. subjective analysis revealed that the aortic ring sign was more sensitive than the interventricular septum sign in detecting anemia, whereas the latter character was more specific
Conclusion:
The results suggest that it is possible to detect anemia from an unenhanced chest CT scan. Both objective and subjective criteria show promising sensitivity and specificity.