ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Vet. Sci.

Sec. Veterinary Imaging

Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1566436

This article is part of the Research TopicMonitoring and Reducing Errors in Veterinary RadiologyView all 5 articles

Comparison of Thoracic Computed Tomography and Surgical Reports in Dogs and Cats #

Provisionally accepted
  • University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Vienna, Vienna, Austria

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

This retrospective study compared computed tomography (CT) and surgical reports in 41 dogs and 23 cats undergoing thoracic surgery (50 thoracotomies, 14 thoracoscopies). Patients were included if they had an in-house CT study performed within 8 days prior to surgery, had a finalized CT report available before surgery, and if the corresponding surgical report was sufficiently detailed to allow meaningful comparison with CT findings. Imaging and surgical findings were extracted and categorized as complete agreement, partial agreement (regarding type, number, or site of lesion), no agreement, or equivocal. Short-term outcome (discharged or deceased) was recorded. Agreement between primary imaging and surgical findings was achieved in 55 of 64 patients (86%): 33 dogs (33/41; 80%) and 22 cats (22/23; 96%). No agreement was found in 6 of 64 patients (9%): bullae were not detected in 3 dogs and 1 cat, a foreign body was missed in 1 dog, and pericarditis was missed in 1 dog. Partial agreement was found in one patient with several bullae (2%). Based on the available data, 2 of 64 patients could not be classified (3%). Surgical reports documented that the most common lesions were pleural effusion (12 dogs, 15 cats) and pulmonary mass/nodule (14 dogs, 5 cats). Fifty-two patients were discharged, while twelve (12/64; 19%) died before discharge (six patients died and six were euthanized). Significant association between categories of pathology and agreement was observed (p < 0.001). The categories of pathology with the highest number of cases (lung mass (n = 19) and pleural effusion (n = 27)) showed only complete agreement between primary imaging and surgical findings. Differences in agreement were associated with perception (n = 4), cognitive error (n=2) and discrepancy (n = 1). Small and camouflaged pathologies, such as low-contrast foreign bodies and ruptured bullae in the atelectatic lung, were most frequently missed or wrongly interpreted in CT reports.

Keywords: dog, cat, computed tomography, Cognitive error, Perception error, Discrepancy

Received: 24 Jan 2025; Accepted: 03 Jul 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Brložnik, Immler, Prüllage, Gruenzweil, Lyrakis, Ludewig and Kneissl. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Sibylle Maria Kneissl, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Vienna, A-1210, Vienna, Austria

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