SHOULD THE PELVIS BE INCLUDED IN ABDOMINAL COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY SCANS OF CHILDREN WITH UPPER-ABDOMINAL PRIMARY MALIGNANT TUMORS?
Christiana Hadgigeorgi, Maria Zarifi, George Pitsoulakis, Ekaterini Tavernaraki, Triantafyllia Makri Computed Tomography and MRI Department, Agia Sophia Children’s Hospital, Athens, Greece ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION: There is increasing awareness of the potential risk associated with ionizing radiation in pediatric radiology. Children with abdominal cancer undergo multiple computed tomography (CT) scans both at diagnosis and for follow-up. OBJECTIVE: We sought to estimate the potential contribution of pelvis CT findings in the management of children with upper-abdominal tumors in correlation with the effective radiation dose. METHODS: Three hundred forty-two children (aged 1 day to 16 years) with histologically proven upper-abdominal primary malignant tumors (children with lymphoma were not included) were examined during the last 15 years in our department. Their upper- and lower-abdominal CT scans were reviewed retrospectively for clinically significant pelvic abnormalities. The effective
