mri diagnostic value in female pelvic mass

mri diagnostic value in female pelvic mass

objective: female pelvic mass is an ordinary finding in women from all age groups. all gynecologists encounter pelvic mass. before making any decision, it is necessary to diagnose the type of pelvic mass, because of its various etiologies. although performing a physical exam is important, studies show that it is not reliable alone and gynecologists need imaging tools to distinguish mass’s types, origin, size, and other features. according to special features of mri, it seems as a more reliable diagnostic tool than ultrasonography (us) and ct scan.. mri has lots of potentials in characterizing mass. if mri is introduced as the most reliable tool, it can help in managing pelvic mass and in preventing unnecessary surgeries.

methods & materials: this descriptive study was performed during 1396-1398 in department of obstetrics and gynecology, tertiary academic hospital (ghaem hospital) affiliated to mashhad university. the patients’ documents were completed from their hospital folders. us and mri reports were also added. afterward, us results, mri results, and pathological findings were compared. these documents were then entered to spss, and sensitivity, specificity, ppv, and npv of mri and us were calculated using histologic findings as the standard criteria for the final diagnosis.

results: the study population comprised 62 women (median age: 37.5 years old (ranged from12 to 74 years old)). about 82 % of patients in this study were in premenopausal age. of 62 lesions, 17 (27.4%) were malignant and the rest of them were benign (72.6%). in the diagnosis of pelvic mass, mri demonstrated sensitivity of 93.3%, specificity of 78.7%, ppv of 58.3%, and npv of 93%. us showed 33.3% sensitivity and 64.7% specificity in detecting pelvic mass. us`s ppv and npv were 14.3% and 84.6% in malignancy prediction, respectively. the reproducibility between mri and us was high, with a kappa of 0.86, but it was not significant (p value<0.05)

conclusion: the use of mri has a high sensitivity for excluding malignancy in women with a pelvic mass. these findings support the use of mri as a tool for the management of women with a pelvic mass to make decisions about surgery, type of surgery, tumor marker, etc.