COMPARISON OF ULTRASOUND WITH FLUOROSCOPY IN THE ASSESSMENT OF SUSPECTED HEMIDIAPHRAGMATIC MOVEMENT ABNORMALITY

A comparative study of quantitative hemidiaphragmatic ultrasound with fluoroscopy was undertaken in 30 patients referred for investigation o f suspected hemidiaphragmatic movement abnormality, The aim of this st udy was to determine whether assessment with ultrasound or fluoroscopy differed, and which technique appeared more suitable in the investiga tion of hemidiaphragmatic movement disorder, There were four technical failures using fluoroscopy (13%), compared with none using ultrasound . Using the normal ranges of right to left ratio of maximal excursion (0.5-2.0 for fluoroscopy and 0.5-1.6 for ultrasound) there was concord ance in 21 out of 26 (81%) patients. All cases of abnormality on fluor oscopy were seen on ultrasound. Four of the discordant cases had excur sions on the lesser side in the normal range on ultrasound suggesting a milder movement abnormality detected by ultrasound than by fluorosco py. Sniff testing conferred no advantage over quantitative testing. Ul trasound has technical, qualitative and quantitative advantages over f luoroscopy and should be the method of choice in the investigation of suspected hemidiaphragmatic movement abnormality.