CAN B-MODE COMPRESSION ULTRASOUND OR DUPLEX SONOGRAPHY BE USED FOR DVT SCREENING IN HIGH RISK PATIENTS? RESULTS OF A META-ANALYSIS

Purpose: Compression ultrasound (CUS) with and without additional Doppler information (Duplex) is widely accepted for the diagnosis of symptomatic DVT, whereas for screening, guidelines recommend contrast phlebography (CP). Published data was analyzed, to evaluate ultrasound (US) for screening. Materials and Methods: A multilingual search of Medline, Embase and Cochrane databases for studies, published between 1989 and 2004, using CP (gold-standard) and CUS and/or duplex for DVT screening in high risk patients was performed and revealed 85 papers. Thereof 62 were excluded. The remaining 23 studies formed the dat…