THE VALUE OF HYOSCINE BUTYLBROMIDE IN ABDOMINAL MR-IMAGING WITH AND WITHOUT ORAL MAGNETIC PARTICLES

Purpose: The purpose of this article was to assess the impact of intra venous (IV) anticholinergic hyoscine butylbromide in abdominal magneti c resonance (MR) im aging with oral magnetic particles (OMP) [ABDOSCAN , Ferristene (USAN), Nycomed Imaging AS, Oslo, Norway]. Materials and methods: In 31 patients with abdominal tumors, T1-weighted spin-echo ( SE) images (SE 600/15; 1.5 T) were obtained without and with IV hyosci ne butylbromide (20 mg) before and after administration of 800 ml of O MP. Two blinded readers assessed motion artifacts, bowel-wall visualiz ation, and lesion delineation on the four sets of T1-weighted images. The two-tailed Wilcoxon paired sample test was used for statistical an alysis (p < .05). Results: Hyoscine butylbromide reduced motion artifa cts and improved bowel-wall visualization on precontrast and OMP-enhan ced images at a statistically significant level (p = 0.0006-0.037). Th e lowest degree of artifacts was recorded on OMP images with hyoscine butylbromide. OMP with hyoscine butylbromide significantly improved le sion delineation compared to studies without antiperistaltic drug befo re (p = 0.019) and after OMP administration (p = 0.01). Conclusions: T he authors conclude that the use of TV hyoscine butylbromide is recomm ended for OMP-enhanced abdominal MR imaging with T1-weighted SE pulse sequences at 1.5 T.