Publications by authors named "Ioannis Vlahos"

Most of the complications can occur after lung resection for lung cancer. Most of complications occur in the early postoperative period but delayed complications are also recognized. Respiratory and cardiovascular complications predominate after lung surgery.

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Drug-induced lung disease is commonly encountered, especially in the oncology setting. Diagnosis is challenging because clinical and radiologic findings are nonspecific, often overlapping with other lung pathologies in these patients due to underlying neoplasia, infection, or other treatment effects such as radiotherapy. Furthermore, oncology patients often receive multiple antineoplastic agents concurrently, and virtually every agent has an association with lung injury.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how using Fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) PET/CT can enhance the effectiveness, safety, and diagnostic accuracy of CT-guided lung biopsies in patients with suspicious lung issues.
  • A retrospective analysis was conducted on 340 patients who underwent lung biopsies, comparing those who had PET/CT scans before and after the biopsy, as well as those who did not have the scans at all, to determine the impact on biopsy outcomes.
  • Results showed that pre-biopsy PET/CT significantly improved targeting accuracy, success rates, and reduced complications, making it particularly beneficial for patients with lung masses compared to those with smaller nodules or multiple nodules.
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Objective: Anecdotal reports from imaging facilities globally suggest growing radiology interpretation reporting delays. This pilot study's primary aim was to estimate the backlog of formal interpretation of imaging examinations.

Methods: An online survey was distributed to radiologists globally to gather practice-specific characteristics, imaging volumes, and reporting for 3 types of examinations (brain/head CT scans, chest CT scans, and chest radiographs) at 4 time points: 7, 30, 90 days, and 6 months.

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Importance: Currently, computed tomography (CT) is used for lung cancer screening (LCS) among populations with various levels of compliance to the eligibility criteria from the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations and may represent suboptimal allocation of health care resources.

Objective: To evaluate the appropriateness of CT LCS according to the USPSTF eligibility criteria.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cross-sectional study used the 2019 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey.

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The normal immune system identifies and eliminates precancerous and cancerous cells. However, tumors can develop immune resistance mechanisms, one of which involves the exploitation of pathways, termed that normally suppress T-cell function. The goal of immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) immunotherapy is to boost T-cell-mediated immunity to mount a more effective attack on cancer cells.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates whether a new ventilatory strategy called VESPA can reduce atelectasis, a condition that complicates peripheral bronchoscopy and affects imaging accuracy in patients under general anesthesia.
  • In a randomized controlled trial with 76 patients, those utilizing the VESPA strategy had a significantly lower occurrence of atelectasis (28.9%) compared to the standard ventilation group (84.2%).
  • Despite the effectiveness of VESPA in minimizing atelectasis, the study found no differences in complications between the two ventilation methods.
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Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a recently approved breakthrough treatment that has become a new paradigm in treatment of recurrent or refractory B-cell lymphomas and pediatric or adult acute lymphoid leukemia. CAR T cells are a type of cellular immunotherapy that artificially enhances T cells to boost eradication of malignancy through activation of the native immune system. The CAR construct is a synthetically created functional cell receptor grafted onto previously harvested patient T cells, which bind to preselected tumor-associated antigens and thereby activate host immune signaling cascades to attack tumor cells.

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A variety of surgical procedures are utilized to treat a spectrum of cardiopulmonary diseases. In the imaging of patients in the post-operative period, it is important to have an understanding of surgical techniques including invasive and minimally invasive procedures and the expected postsurgical findings. Knowledge of certain patient risk factors, various complications associated with specific surgical procedures, and a keen attention to detail are essential to avoid misinterpretation and delay diagnosis.

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Most lung cancers are diagnosed at advanced stage when the cancer has metastasized outside the lung. These patients are not eligible for curative surgery or radiation therapy and treated with systemic therapy. Advances in the understanding of the biology of lung cancer has resulted in the development of targeted therapy aimed at specific genetic mutations identified with non-small cell lung cancer and immunotherapy that helps the immune system recognize tumors as foreign, stimulates the immune system, and removes the inhibition that allows growth and spread of cancer cells.

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Malignant pleural mesothelioma is a rare tumor arising from the pleural mesothelial cells. Imaging plays a crucial role in the diagnosis, staging, and management of patients with mesothelioma. Accurate staging to stratify patients into homogeneous groups is required to evaluate the effectiveness of multimodality therapeutic regimens.

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Dual-energy CT (DECT) imaging is a technique that extends the capabilities of CT beyond that of established densitometric evaluations. CT pulmonary angiography (CTPA) performed with dual-energy technique benefits from both the availability of low kVp CT data and also the concurrent ability to quantify iodine enhancement in the lung parenchyma. Parenchymal enhancement, presented as pulmonary perfused blood volume maps, may be considered as a surrogate of pulmonary perfusion.

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Evolution of the multimodality management of early lung cancer, including progress in surgical techniques, has introduced the possibility of resection for lung cancer cases that historically were considered unresectable (e.g., select cases of T4 disease and oligometastatic disease).

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to assess how effective dual-phase dual-energy CT pulmonary angiography is in diagnosing pulmonary hypertension (PH) by measuring vascular enhancement and blood volume.
  • A total of 102 participants were examined, with results showing that those with PH had significant differences in pulmonary artery enhancement and blood volume across two CT series.
  • The changes in blood volume measurements were highlighted as the most reliable indicators for determining the severity of PH, with strong correlations found between these metrics and pulmonary artery pressure as well as vascular resistance.
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Respiratory viruses are the most common causes of acute respiratory infections. However, identification of the underlying viral pathogen may not always be easy. Clinical presentations of respiratory viral infections usually overlap and may mimic those of diseases caused by bacteria.

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The adrenal gland may exhibit a wide variety of pathologic conditions. A number of imaging techniques can be used to characterize these, although it is not always possible to attain a definitive diagnosis radiologically. Incorrect diagnoses may be made if radiologists are not attentive to technical parameters and interpretive factors associated with adrenal gland imaging.

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Tracheobronchial injuries are a rare but potentially life-threatening cause of respiratory insufficiency, with high mortality rates. For patients with potentially survivable tracheobronchial injuries, imaging in the acute setting plays a key role in demonstrating the injuries and associated complications. The radiologist can improve outcomes by understanding typical injury patterns according to injury mechanism and the influence that imaging findings may have on treatment decisions.

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There is a wide variety of causes of diffuse lung disease in the intensive care unit patient, of which adult respiratory distress syndrome is the commonest clinical consideration. Plain radiography, computed tomography, and ultrasound can be used synergistically to evaluate patients with diffuse lung disease and respiratory impairment. Imaging is not limited to characterization of the cause of diffuse lung disease but also aids in monitoring its evolution and in ventilator setting management.

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The accurate identification and characterization of small pulmonary nodules at low-dose CT is an essential requirement for the implementation of effective lung cancer screening. Individual reader detection performance is influenced by nodule characteristics and technical CT parameters but can be improved by training, the application of CT techniques, and by computer-aided techniques. However, the evaluation of nodule detection in lung cancer screening trials differs from the assessment of individual readers as it incorporates multiple readers, their inter-observer variability, reporting thresholds, and reflects the program accuracy in identifying lung cancer.

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Early lung cancers associated with cystic airspaces are increasingly being recognized as a cause of delayed diagnoses-owing to data gathered from screening trials and encounters in routine clinical practice as more patients undergo serial imaging. Several morphologic subtypes of cancers associated with cystic airspaces exist and can exhibit variable patterns of progression as the solid elements of the tumor grow. Current understanding of the pathogenesis of these malignancies is limited, and the numbers of cases reported in the literature are small.

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The advent of the 8th edition of the lung cancer staging system reflects a further meticulous evidence-based advance in the stratification of the survival of patients with lung cancer. Although addressing many limitations of earlier staging systems, several limitations in staging remain. This article reviews from a radiological perspective the limitations of the current staging system, highlighting the process of TNM restructuring, the residual issues with regards to the assignment of T, N, M descriptors, and their associated stage groupings and how these dilemmas impact guidance of multidisciplinary teams taking care of patients with lung cancer.

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We present a case of iatrogenic extensive air embolism in the peripheral pulmonary arterial tree following intravenous contrast injection for a CT pulmonary angiogram performed to investigate chest pain in a 25-year-old female patient. Small volumes of iatrogenic air embolism following contrast injection are not infrequently encountered incidentally in the central vasculature (brachiocephalic veins, superior vena cava, right cardiac chambers and main pulmonary arteries). To our knowledge, however, this is the only case of extensive peripheral pulmonary arterial air embolism on CT that has been reported in the literature.

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