Understanding the diagnosis of superior mesenteric artery syndrome: analysis of the location of duodenal impression on upper gastrointestinal studies
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Upper gastrointestinal (GI) contrast studies are frequently requested to aid superior mesenteric artery syndrome diagnosis, a rare entity. Compression of the third duodenal part is expected to be mid-to-left of the midline where the superior mesenteric artery arises from the aorta; however, a duodenal impression to the right of the midline due to normal anatomic impression by the inferior vena cava (IVC) is often encountered and frequently misdiagnosed. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to determine the frequencies of (1) normal right-of-midline duodenal impressions and (2) mid-to-left of midline compressions in upper GI studies in a tertiary pediatric referral center. MATERIALS AND METHODS: All upper GI studies performed at our institution over 2 years were retrospectively evaluated to determine whether the duodenum had vertical duodenal impression to the right of the vertebral midline, mid-to-left of the vertebral midline, or no identifiable duodenal impression at all. RESULTS: In total, 538 upper GI studies were included in this analysis. A total of 275 male and 247 female patients between 0 and 17 years of age (median: 6 years, range: 1 month-17 years) were included. Of 538 total upper GI studies, there were 240 studies (44.6%) with a right-of-midline impression. There were only 10 studies (1.9%) with a mid-to-left of midline compression, and 9/10 also showed a concurrent right-sided impression sign. CONCLUSION: Right-of-midline duodenal impression is a normal anatomic finding caused by the IVC and should not be confused with superior mesenteric artery syndrome. In the presence of an appropriate clinical context, proximal duodenal dilation, "to-and-fro" motion of contrast, and duodenal impression at mid-to-left of midline, a diagnosis of superior mesenteric artery syndrome should be considered.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".