Multiple radiologist review of adrenal CT still frequently misses lateralized surgical primary aldosteronism

Abstract

Abstract Patients with primary aldosteronism (PA) have increased morbidity and mortality compared to those with essential hypertension. Accurate detection of lateralized PA is important so that affected patients can receive potentially curative adrenalectomy. However, around 40% of patients with lateralized PA have “normal” adrenal glands on computed tomography (CT). Additional independent review of imaging has been shown to improve diagnostic accuracy in many areas of imaging. Therefore, the authors sought to establish if multi‐reader re‐assessment of previously reported normal CT scans would result in increased detection of surgically remediable disease. The authors found that re‐assessment of CT imaging by one, two, or three additional radiologists (or a combination thereof) slightly increased the detection of lateralized disease, but these differences were not statistically significant (p > .05). Readers had low inter‐observer agreement (kappa = 0.17). If detection of a discrete nodule on CT was made a prerequisite for adrenal vein sampling (AVS), a second read by another reviewer would still result in an excess of missed cases (84.2%, 36.8%, and 65.8%, respectively, for each of the three independent reviewers). Therefore, a “normal” CT does not preclude the possibility of lateralized PA. Adrenal vein sampling should still be strongly considered wherever available and whenever surgery is considered for treatment of PA, irrespective of CT findings.

Keywords

• aldosterone excess
• computed tomography (CT)
• other
• secondary high blood pressure (HBP)