Evangelos Perdikakis, Evangelia G. Chryssou, Apostolos Karantanas
University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece
Introduction
Duodenal diverticula occur very commonly with a reported incidence of 1- 6% in upper gastrointestinal barium studies and prevalence as high as 22% in autopsy studies [1,2]. Despite their incidence, duodenal diverticula are usually asymptomatic [2]. For that reason the duodenum is often overlooked on cross sectional imaging studies as an underlying cause in the setting of acute abdominal symptomatology [3]. Due to the continuing evolution of Multidetector Computed Tomography (MDCT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology and the application of post-processing techniques, accurate depiction and demonstration of duodenal anatomy and pathology is now feasible [4,5]. Although the role of imaging in complications resulting from duodenal diverticula has been described, to the best of our knowledge this is the first study focusing solely on acute abdominal symptomatology. Furthermore we provide comparative data regarding the depiction of duodenal periampullary diverticula in the axial and coronal plane in MDCT exams and secondly we examine the ability of diverticular neck demonstration in the aforementioned planes.
