The Clinical Application of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose Positron Emission Tomography to Predict Survival in Patients With Operable Esophageal Cancer.

The article presents a study which examines the effectiveness of standardized uptake value (SUV) in the primary or regional area (peak SUV) and the number of positron emission tomography (PET)-positive lymph nodes in esophageal cancer. Result shows that peak SUV and the number of PET-positive lymph nodes were found to be independent factors for overall survival. They concluded that pretreatment PET cannot diagnose the disease but is useful to patients who underwent esophageal cancer resection.