Rofo 2018; 190(12): 1170-1171
DOI: 10.1055/a-0757-5696
Letter to the Editor
© Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York

Response to “T2-weighted PROPELLER MRI is not suitable for pulmonary emphysema quantification”

Michael Meier-Schroers
1   Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Hospital of Düren, Düren
2   Department of Radiology, University of Bonn, Bonn
,
D. Thomas
2   Department of Radiology, University of Bonn, Bonn
› Author Affiliations
Further Information

Publication History

Publication Date:
25 October 2018 (online)

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Dear editor,

First of all, we would like to thank the authors of this letter for their interest in our work [1]. The authors state that qualitative assessment of emphysema is known to have poor to moderate agreement based on a CT study on pulmonary emphysema by Smith et al. [2]. However, Smith et al. report substantial to excellent intra-reader agreement for all subtypes of emphysema (centrilobular, paraseptal, panlobular), moderate to substantial inter-reader agreement for centrilobular and paraseptal emphysema (only poor for panlobular emphysema), moderate to excellent reliability of severity for all subtypes for both intra-reader and inter-reader assessment, and substantial inter-reader agreement for predominant emphysema subtypes [2]. Smith et al. also point out that the visual assessment of emphysema on CT is clinical gold standard [2]. For this reason and because Smith et al. did not mention MRI in their study [2], we think that the authors’ statement regarding the poor to moderate agreement is a bit misleading.