| Managing
patients with kidney stones would be a lot easier if
physicians knew precisely what kind of stones they were
dealing with. They'd know after a quick CT scan, for
example, whether lithotripsy was a viable option or more
invasive measures were needed.
Prospects for
noninvasively determining stone composition have
recently gotten a boost from dual-source CT (DSCT),
which studies show can reliably distinguish uric acid
from nonuric acid stones.
This month, researchers
from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, raised the bar
again with their use of special beam filtering combined
with DSCT. How high? According to results unveiled at
the 2009 RSNA meeting, the use of dual-energy scanning
combined with beam filtering and special software can
reliably distinguish as many as five different stone
types noninvasively. |
