[Investigation of the Hounsfield number of drugs in stomach using computed tomography in vitro].

BACKGROUND: A high density area (HDA) that may represent ingested drugs was detected in the stomach of a patient with a drug overdose (OD) by computed tomography (CT). However, there is no prior evidence that drugs can be visualized as an HDA by abdominal CT. We investigated whether drugs can be imaged as an HDA by CT.

METHODS: Ten tablets, 5 tablets, 1 tablet and 0.1 tablet of either Solanax (0.4 mg) or Depas (0.5 mg) or Tryptanol (10 mg) or Paxil (10 mg) or Wintermin (25 mg) or Phenobal (30 mg) or Hiberna (25 mg) were each added to 10 ml of artificial gastric juice. We then measured the Hounsfield numbers immediately after mixing, 1 hour later and 7 hours later using CT images.

RESULTS: All of the drugs precipitated in the artificial gastric juice and these precipitations were imaged as HDAs over 100 Hounsfield units. Moreover, the drugs maintained high Hounsfield numbers after 7 hours although there was a trend to decrease sequentially.

CONCLUSION: We demonstrated that the precipitated drugs in the artificial gastric juice could be imaged as HDAs by CT.