Computed tomography of the spleen

Abstract

Computed tomography is a very useful method in the diagnosis of splenopathy--any anomalies, inflammatory, neoplastic as well as traumatic states of the spleen. Although these processes are not too frequent, their correct determination is an important part of radiodiagnosis. Computed tomography is so far the best method used for the identification of the congenital varieties of the spleen that may be mistaken, in another examination, for a pathological process of an adjacent organ. In the study a total of 185 pathological spleen findings was evaluated. These were obtained from the total of 18,960 CT examinations of the abdomen. The most frequent finding was splenomegaly (69.2%), less frequent were haematomas and splenic cysts (12.4%) and congenital varieties of the spleen (8.1%). Sporadically, splenic infarction (2.7%), thrombosis of the splenic vein (3.8%), tumour (2.2%) and splenic abscess (1.6%) were demonstrated.