Sonographic assessment of the normal limits of the spleen in healthy school children in South-East Nigeria

Background/Objective: Ultrasonogrphy is a good modality for the  detection of splenomegaly even when it is not clinically palpable. The objective of this study was to establish the normal values of splenic length in healthy school children in South.East, Nigeria and to correlate them with body indices.Materials and Methods: This is a cross.sectional prospective study of 1315 children (633 boys and 682 girls) between the ages of 5 and 17 years. The splenic length was measured between the most superiomedial and the most inferiolateral margins, at the level of the hilum. Only the spleens that had normal shape and echotexture were measured. The mean splenic length and the 5th and 95th percentiles were determined for each age. The length was correlated with the sex, age, weight (WT), height, body mass index (BMI) and body surface area (BSA) of the subjects. A regression model for prediction of spleen dimension from age and body habitus was computed.Results: There was a significant correlation between splenic length and age, P < 0.001. Males had statistically significant longer spleen length than females. The splenic length correlated best with BSA, followed by body WT and least with BMI.Conclusions: This study noted racial variation between the established Nigerian values and results from other countries of the world. For the first time, a baseline value for splenic size for the Nigerian Children of various ages has been established with a regression model for predicting the splenic sizes.Key words: Children, echotexture, Nigeria, sonography, spleen,  splenomegaly, ultrasonograph

The prevalence of cervical ribs in Enugu, Nigeria

Background: Cervical rib is an important cause of nontraumatic thoracic outlet neurovascular compression. This study was undertaken as there is no known documented report on its prevalence in the study environment.Aims: To evaluate the prevalence of cervical ribs and its variation with sex and age among patients presenting at radiological facilities for a chest radiograph.Settings and Design: Retrospective evaluation of plain posterior‑anterior view chest radiographs done in radiological facilities in Enugu, Southeast, Nigeria.Subjects and Methods: Evaluated in this study were all 6571 chest radiographs consecutively obtained between 2009 and 2012 in three randomly selected radiological facilities in Enugu. Statistical Analysis Used: SPSS version 17 software was used in data analysis. Chi‑square and student t‑tests were used to test for the significance of findings at 95% confidence level.Results: This study reports the overall prevalence of cervical ribs as 48 (0.7%) with a significantly higher rate in females 43 (1.1%) when compared to males 5 (0.2%) (P = 0.000). In 27 (0.4%) cases, the cervical ribs were bilateral; whereas in 21 (0.3%) cases, they were unilateral with 8 (0.1%) on the left and 13 (0.2%) on the right. There was no age‑related variability with prevalence (P = −0.813).Conclusions: The prevalence of cervical rib in the study population is low and within the known range as seen in other geographical regions of Nigeria.Keywords: Cervical ribs, chest radiographs, Nigeri