SAN FRANCISCO, July 26 (UPI) -- Virtual colonoscopy can reveal diseases outside the colon, a study conducted at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center says.
Researcher said they found computed tomographic colonography -- in which a detailed picture of the colon is provided by an X-ray machine hooked up to a computer, known as virtual colonoscopy -- can be used to diagnose significant medical problems in organs outside the colon.
In the study, 45 virtual colonoscopy patients out of 500, or 9 percent, were found to have clinically important extracolonic findings ranging from kidney cancers to abdominal aortic aneurysms. In 35 of the patients, or 7 percent, those conditions had not been previously diagnosed.
"That's a fairly large percentage," said principal investigator and lead author Dr. Judy Yee, chief of radiology at the medical center. "Depending on the patient population you look at, this finding suggests that it may be more common to find something significant outside of the colon than in the colon with this technique, because there is more likely to be a problem outside the colon."
The study is being published in the August 2005 issue of the journal Radiology.
