Recently, there have been netizens on social platforms
shared his experience of a false alarm during a physical examination:
X-rays are done to check out the lungs
There is a 10×15mm nodule
Netizens were scared to death
A CT scan was immediately followed
But the more I thought about it when I got home, the more wrong it became
I remembered that there was an embroidery on the dress I was wearing that day
Just wondering if it could be the cause of this embroidery
This netizen shared: "I ran a total of four times before and after, didn't go to work on weekends, waited for three or four days before the results came out, and then the CT results did not have this nodule! “
He said that although it cost a few hundred, it was at least a false alarm, and he also suggested that everyone "must wear completely solid color clothes for future physical examinations!"
There is embroidery on the clothes
Will it affect the results of the X-rays?
Xiao Wenbo, director of the radiology department of the First Hospital of Zhejiang University, said that when X-ray examination is conducted, such a situation may indeed occur, which is clinically called "artifact".
Artifacts refer to some abnormal images that are not related to the tissue being photographed due to equipment or patient reasons during the shooting process, and its presence will cause image quality degradation, and sometimes confuse the lesion to cause misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis.
"X-ray is the use of ray penetration, by penetrating the object to image, that is, from one side of the tissue or organ irradiation from the other side, projected to the flat panel detector, the overall imaging, there is a certain amount of image overlap and occlusion. Like this netizen's experience, it should be that the position of the embroidery just overlapped with the lungs, and the artifact of the embroidery was misjudged to be a lung nodule. ”
Xiao Wenbo said that when taking X-rays in clinical practice, if there are objects on the body or clothing that are denser than human tissue, but not as dense as metal, there may be artifacts that are difficult to identify (if it is a metal artifact, it is generally easier to see), such as buttons, embroidery, or decorations such as rhinestones and plastic beads on clothes, "especially one here and there, not small particles of ornaments gathered together, which are more likely to be mistaken for nodules." In addition, when we encounter patients with plasters on the examination site, we need to instruct the patient to remove the plaster, otherwise the plaster will affect the diagnosis. ”
"Of course, in the case of CT scans, objects such as buttons, embroidery, and plasters (except for dog skin plasters) will not have much impact on the diagnosis, and it is necessary to decide whether to remove them according to the on-site judgment of the CT examiner. Because CT is a tomography imaging of an organ layer by layer, like slicing a potato, post-processing can be made into a three-dimensional image, there is no overlapping imaging, but like X-rays, when taking CT, metal objects on the body must be removed. ”
Umbilical nails, wigs, shapewear......
A wide variety of metal artifacts in the clinic
Regarding metal artifacts, Shen Xiaoyong, deputy director of the Department of Radiology of the First Hospital of Zhejiang University, and his colleagues have encountered many things in clinical work.
- "I once met a young girl, X-ray examination showed that there was metal in the abdomen, at that time my first reaction was not to eat by mistake, she said that she had not eaten anything that might have metal, and then the clothes and pants were checked, and there was no problem. In the end, I asked a female colleague to help check it, and found that there was an umbilical nail on the girl's navel, and she didn't expect this stubble at all. ”
- Another middle-aged man came for a CT scan of the head, and when he was examined, he found several strangely shaped metals on his head, and when he questioned the patient, he embarrassedly said that he was wearing a wig on his head. ”
- "It's more common to see women's corsetes, which have a lot of supporting 'fishbones', when we first encountered them, we didn't know what they were, but then we saw a lot of them, and when we saw the neatly arranged vertical bars, we knew it. ”
- "There are also some middle-aged and elderly men who have seen many metal artifacts in their private parts, and when I asked, I found out that they were wearing 'health underwear', and there were many small magnets built into the crotch, which was called 'magnetic therapy'......"
Recommended before imaging
Be prepared and follow your doctor's instructions
Doctor advises
When performing imaging examinations such as X-rays, CT, and magnetic resonance
Try to wear loose-fitting, unadorned clothing
For female patients
Underwired underwear must be removed during some inspection items
To avoid embarrassment, it is also possible to wear underwear beforehand
In addition, before the examination, you should take off the ornaments of the corresponding examination area, such as pendants, necklaces, etc., and if there is a plaster (especially a black dog skin plaster) or a warm baby, you should also tear it off. If there are dentures, heart stents, fracture fixations, etc. that cannot be removed, you should inform your doctor in advance and cooperate with the examination.
Doctor reminds
Doctors also encounter the following situations in clinical practice:
After adjusting the positioning posture required for the patient's examination site, he returned to the operating room and was about to start taking the radiograph, but the patient thought that the examination was over and got up to leave;
Or the patient suddenly changes their body position while the film is being taken, resulting in the need for a reshoot.
Here is a reminder to everyone, please pay attention to the doctor's instructions during the examination, adjust the position and stay still until the doctor tells the completion of the examination before leaving, so as not to affect the examination results.
When you do an X-ray
Have you ever had a similar embarrassing experience?
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Source: Metropolis Express, Newsroom
Editor-in-charge: Zhu Meirong
Editor: Anne Xu