Comparative Study between CT and MRI in Assessment of Laryngeal Cartilage Invasion in Laryngeal Carcinoma

Abstract Background: Laryngeal cancer comprises 2 to 5% of all malignant diseases diagnosed annually worldwide. Cartilage invasion by the laryngeal cancer is of great importance through the staging of laryngeal carcinoma according to TNM classi-fication and has a great impact on management plan. There is a scarcity in the published literature regarding the comparison between MRI and CT for assessment of cartilage involvement. Aim of Study: To assess the validity of MRI and to compare this with CT findings in predicting inner and outer thyroid cartilage laminae invasion in patients with laryngeal carcinoma. Patients and Methods: The present study was an obser-vational analytical study that was carried out from January 2018 to June 2019 at the Radiology Department of Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University. A total of 30 patients with laryngeal carcinoma were included. CT and MRI was done for all patients. Results: There was a good agreement between readers in CT interpretation in term of inner lamina involvement (K=0.78) and very good agreement in term of outer lamina involvement (K=0.87). While in MRI interpretation, there was a very good agreement between readers in term of inner lamina involvement (K=0.83) and outer lamina involvement (K=0.92). However higher accuracy & confidence levels were found on interpre-tation of both CT and MRI together. We found a higher interobserver agreement between interpretation of CT and MRI together (K=1.00). Conclusion: MRI showed high validity and precision in detecting inner and outer thyroid lamina invasion by laryngeal caner than CT scan. We found that the combination of CT and MRI together was associated with more accuracy and confidence level for the readers.