1. 18F-FDG PET/CT in the post-operative monitoring of patients with adrenocortical carcinoma
- Author
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Eleonora Duregon, Arianna Ardito, Vittoria Basile, Barbara Zaggia, Daniele Penna, Ettore Pelosi, Chiara Massaglia, Paola Perotti, V Arena, R Brambilla, Federica Vigna-Taglianti, and Massimo Terzolo
- Subjects
Adult ,Male ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Lung Neoplasms ,Adolescent ,Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism ,Context (language use) ,Likelihood ratios in diagnostic testing ,Multimodal Imaging ,Sensitivity and Specificity ,Cohort Studies ,Young Adult ,Endocrinology ,Fluorodeoxyglucose F18 ,medicine ,Adrenocortical Carcinoma ,Adrenocortical carcinoma ,Humans ,Postoperative Period ,Aged ,Retrospective Studies ,Lung ,medicine.diagnostic_test ,business.industry ,Liver Neoplasms ,Retrospective cohort study ,Adrenalectomy ,General Medicine ,Gold standard (test) ,Middle Aged ,medicine.disease ,Adrenal Cortex Neoplasms ,medicine.anatomical_structure ,Positron emission tomography ,Abdominal Neoplasms ,Positron-Emission Tomography ,Female ,Radiology ,Tomography ,Neoplasm Recurrence, Local ,Radiopharmaceuticals ,Nuclear medicine ,business ,Tomography, X-Ray Computed - Abstract
ContextThe role of 18F-labeled 2-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) in the post-operative monitoring of patients with adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is still unclear.ObjectiveTo assess the accuracy of FDG PET/CT to diagnose ACC recurrence in a real world setting.Design and methodsRetrospective evaluation of data of 57 patients with presumed ACC recurrence at CT scan who underwent FDG PET/CT within a median time of 20 days. We compared the results of either FDG PET/CT or CT with a gold standard confirmation of recurrence (positive histopathology report of removed/biopsied lesions or radiological progression of target lesions at follow-up) to assess their diagnostic performance at different body sites to correctly categorize target lesions. We also assessed whether FDG PET/CT findings may be useful to inform the management strategy.ResultsIn 48 patients with confirmed ACC recurrence, we found that FDG PET/CT had lower sensitivity than CT in diagnosing liver and lung recurrences of ACC. FDG PET/CT had higher specificity than CT in categorizing liver lesions. FDG PET/CT had a greater positive likelihood ratio than CT to identify liver and abdominal ACC recurrences. The management strategy was changed based on FDG PET/CT findings in 12 patients (21.1%).ConclusionsThe greater sensitivity of CT may be partly expected due the specific inclusion criteria of the study; however, the greater specificity of FDG PET/CT was particularly useful in ruling out suspected ACC recurrences found by CT. Thus, use of FDG PET/CT as a second-line test in the post-operative surveillance of ACC patients following CT finding of a potential recurrence may have a significant impact on patient management.
- Published
- 2015