Updated Pediatric Sonographic Percentile Curves for Abdominal Organ Size in a Large European Cohort.

Authors

Elena Höhne, Sebastian Fischer, Jennifer Gotta, Philipp Reschke, Vitali Koch, Scherwin Mahmoudi, Ibrahim Yel, Katrin Eichler, Jan-Henning Klusmann, Thomas Vogl, Leon Grünewald

Published in

Academic radiology. Oct 05, 2026. Epub Oct 05, 2026.

Abstract

Accurate measurement of liver, spleen, and kidney size plays a central role in pediatric diagnostics. Contemporary sonographic percentile data are needed to support interpretation of organ dimensions in clinical practice. This study aimed to generate age-specific clinical reference percentiles for abdominal organ size based on a large real-world pediatric ultrasound cohort.
This retrospective analysis included 27,696 clinically indicated pediatric abdominal ultrasound examinations conducted between 2000 and 2025 at a major urban tertiary-care center in Germany. Standardized organ measurements were obtained by experienced pediatric radiologists. Patients were not excluded on the basis of underlying pathology. Age-specific clinical percentile curves (P3-P97) were generated using Generalized Additive Models for Location, Scale, and Shape (GAMLSS) to capture non-linear growth patterns.
From 27,696 examinations of children aged 0-18, organ-specific measurements comprised 12,254 livers, 12,703 spleens, 16,254 right kidneys, and 16,516 left kidneys. All organs demonstrated non-linear growth trajectories. No overall statistically significant sex differences were observed in this cohort for spleen (p = 0.195), liver (p = 0.517), right kidney (p = 0.712), or left kidney (p = 0.797). Owing to the retrospective design, sex-specific variation within individual age strata cannot be excluded. The left kidney was consistently larger than the right (p<0.0001), with a mean difference of 2-5 mm.
This study presents contemporary clinical percentile curves for liver, spleen, and kidney dimensions derived from one of the largest Central European pediatric ultrasound datasets published to date. The curves provide population-specific benchmarks for interpreting pediatric abdominal organ dimensions in real-world clinical practice and aim to support standardized assessment across the full pediatric age range.

PMID:
42833969
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 06 Oct 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.