Abstract

SAN MIGUEL SIMBRON, José Luis. Evaluación del tamaño del timo: Validez y confiabilidad de la ecografía del timo en niños. Cuad. - Hosp. Clín. [online]. 2007, vol.52, n.2, pp.39-45. ISSN 1562-6776.

Evaluation of the thymus size: validity and reliableness of thymus sonography in children. INTRODUCTION. The porpuse of this paper was to stablish the validity and the reliableness of thymus sonography in children under 6 years of age of both sexes. At present, thymus songraphy is one of the tools for assessing the function of the immune response by means of a reliable and non-invasive method. METHODS. The validity of thymus ultrasongraphy is demonstrated in front of a gold standard, in dead children, sonography was performed and compared to pathological anatomy (group 1); and in other children, sonography was compared to computerized axial tomography (TAC) (group 2). The reliableness was evaluated at the intraobserver level (group 3). The children´s nutritional status was assessed by: weight for height; weight for age; and height for age. On all children with TAC and reliableness evaluation a clinical exam was performed and a paediatric clinic questionnaire was fi lled out. RESULTS. The evaluation by pathological anatomy (n=5) as well as the computerized axial tomography as compared to thymus sonography did not show statistically signifi cant differences in the measurements of thymus size. In group 3 (n=15), the intraobserver correlation index was 0.96. Statistical analysis was performed using one-way ANOVA + test of a Scheffé and analysis of variance (ANOVA). CONCLUSION. The validity of the thymus sonography in children is adequate, it is a tool that "measures what it says it measures". The intraobserver reliableness establishes an almost perfect correlation index in a well trained person for measuring thymus size by sonography in children.

Keywords : Thymus; ultrasongraphy; validity; reliableness.