Utilización de la resonancia magnética con contraste de fase para el diagnóstico del síndrome de congestión pelviana

Abstract

Introduction: Pelvic Congestion Syndrome (PCS) is produced by anomalous flow in ovarian veins. Direct venography (DV) is the current diagnostic gold-standard. Since Phase-Contrast Magnetic Resonance Angiography (PCMRA) allow morphological and functional evaluation of blood vessels, our hypothesis is that PC-MRA could be used as an alternative to DV for the diagnose of PCS.
Patients and methods: We included prospectively 8 patients sent for DV with clinical suspicion of PCS within a six-month period. All PC-MRAs were performed before the DV. In PC-MRA we considered as indicative of the presence of PCS the following findings: slow anterograde flow velocity or retrograde flow.
Results: We processed the data of 16 veins using a home-made software written in Matlab. There were 12 abnormal and 4 normal veins according to the DV and fourteen of them were corretly indentified by PC-MRA. Two veins (corresponding to a single patient), were considered as normal according to the DV, and abnormal according to the PC-MRA because of the presence of slow anterograde flow. In this case however, the patient presented typical clinical symptoms for PCS.
Conclusion: PC-MRA is a useful non-invasive diagnostic technique for patients with clinical suspicion of PCS and could avoid the used of invasive diagnostic procedures.