Contrast-Enhanced Computed Tomography Does Not Provide More Information about Sarcopenia than Unenhanced Computed Tomography in Patients with Pancreatic Cancer

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to understand whether enhanced CT can provide more information than unenhanced CT on diagnosis of sarcopenia. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We reviewed the enhanced CT data of 45 patients of pancreatic cancer. Manual tracing of the psoas muscles was used for measuring the cross-sectional muscle areas and attenuation at umbilicus level; afterwards, PMI, PMD, and Δ PMD were calculated. RESULTS: In the unenhanced scanning, arterial, venous, and parenchymal phases of enhanced CT, PMI values were 6.905 ± 2.170, 6.886 ± 2.195, 6.923 ± 2.239, and 6.866 ± 2.218, respectively, and the difference was not statistically significant. The PMD values at different phases were 34.311 ± 7.535, 37.487 ± 7.118, 40.689 ± 7.116, and 42.989 ± 7.745, respectively, which were gradually increased, and the difference was statistically significant. Meanwhile, the PMD of arterial phase, venous phase, and parenchyma phase showed a linear correlation with PMD of unenhanced scanning phase. 31 patients had low PMD and 14 had normal PMD during the unenhanced scanning phase. With the addition of contrast agent, ΔPMD values increased faster in the low PMD group than in the normal PMD group during the venous and parenchymal phases (7.048 ± 3.067 vs 4.893 ± 2.558; 9.581 ± 3.033 vs 6.679 ± 2.621; p < 0.05), which made the gap between PMD after contrast-enhancement vs. unenhanced scanning smaller. CONCLUSION: The use of contrast agent has no effect on the manually measured PMI values but can change the results of PMD. This change makes the difference of PMD in different enhancement phases smaller than that in plain scan phase and furthermore increases the examination cost; therefore, it is not recommended to use enhanced CT routinely with fixed dose administration of contrast agent for patients' assessment of PMI and PMD.