Diagnostic accuracy of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging for cervical lymph node metastasis from oral cancer

TL;DR

This study shows that diffusion-weighted MRI is effective in detecting cervical lymph node metastasis from oral cancer.

Contribution

The study provides empirical evidence of DWI's diagnostic accuracy for oral cancer metastasis using histopathology as a gold standard.

Findings

DWI demonstrated a sensitivity of 90.57% for detecting metastases.

The overall accuracy of DWI was 91.33% compared to histopathology.

Abstract

To determine the accuracy of diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) for the
diagnosis of cervical lymph node metastasis from oral cancer.

This was a cross-sectional study conducted in the Radiology Department of the
Mayo Hospital, in the city of Lahore, Pakistan. We included 150 patients
diagnosed with oral cancer. Ages ranged from 18 to 60 years of age. During
the study period, all of the patients included underwent magnetic resonance
imaging, including a DWI sequence, in a 1.5-T scanner with a phased-array
head and neck coil. Patients with contraindications to magnetic resonance
(aneurysm, a pacemaker, clips, plates, a prosthetic valve, or
claustrophobia) were excluded. In the DWI sequence, the area scanned
included the lymph nodes from suprasternal notch to the base of the skull.
Histopathology of the lymph nodes was employed as the gold standard.

The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive
value, and accuracy of DWI for the diagnosis of oral cancer metastasis to
cervical lymph nodes, with histopathology as the gold standard, was 90.57%,
91.75%, 94.68%, 90.57%, and 91.33%, respectively.

Our findings indicate that DWI is fairly accurate for detecting metastases in
the cervical lymph nodes of patients with oral cancer.

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