Evaluation of the Morphometric Measurements of Main Mediastinal Vascular Structures with Multi-detector Computed Tomography in Healthy Children

Abstract

Objective:In this study, we aimed to evaluate the feasibility of the main pulmonary artery (MPA)/ascending aorta (AA) ratio measurement, which is 1:1 in adults, using the multi-detector computed tomographt in pediatric patients also.Method:The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (number: 09.2016.014, approval date: 08.01.2016) and informed consent was waived since the study was retrospective. IV contrast-enhanced pulmonary computed tomography images of 487 pediatric patients (0-18 years), which had been performed between January 2015 and February 2016 in our center, were retrospectively evaluated. The diameters of the AA, MPA, right and left pulmonary arteries, and thoracic aorta were measured separately.Results:A positive correlation was determined between the diameters of mediastinal vascular structures and the patient age. The MPA/AA ratio was higher in the pediatric group when compared to adults, and this ratio was found to be higher than 1 in all pediatric cases.Conclusion:The higher diameter of MPA when compared to AA in pediatric cases is thought to be responsible for MPA/AA ratio being greater than 1, and that should not be considered as pulmonary hypertension. We suggest a threshold of 1.06 for the MPA/AA ratio regarding the diagnosis of PH.

Keywords

• aorta
• child
• hypertension
• pulmonary artery
• tomography